Under Your Skin
by fleurlicorne
Summary: It all starts with someone getting under your skin and before you know it, they've struck straight through your heart and it only ends once they become lodged deep into your soul. A Bulma and Vegeta story spanning the entirety of their relationship that follows the events in the manga and the anime.
1. Sturm und Drang

Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Ball, that privilege belongs to Akira Toriyama

 **Part I: Under Your Skin**

 **Chapter 1 – Sturm und Drang**

When he awoke it was dark, but it was not a darkness to which he was accustomed. The darkness he had known, that had covered him like an impenetrable cloak, was complete and absolute, a submarine cavern, too polar and inhospitable to support any life. That was not the darkness that now sleeved over him. This one had been tailor-made to be many sizes too small and had shrunken from the wash of death, where it had come out still wet and worse, dripping with life.

The scarabs of death, beetles with shiny black carapaces scuttled through the underground surf.

'I died,' he recalled with some displaced turmoil, the avoidance of which once being of paramount importance to his life. 'I didn't get to live forever, only this mortification is immortal. I was slain by my oppressor Freeza, my mutiny towards him gleaning only my blood. And now I lie in a shallow grave, or is this just the first level of hell? But who would deign to prepare a grave for one as I?' So many questions and all the time to meditate upon them.

If this was how things would be forever more then he had gotten off lightly. He was not some child afraid of the dark. If the gods had truly done their research, they would have known he feared the light and not placed him in the dark, no matter how different and unsettling it seemed, to suffer for all eternity.

'Also, if I have died, then why do I still breathe? Why are my ribs protesting against the accumulation of carbon dioxide ballooning in my lungs? I'm slowly suffocating, desperate for a breath of air but my mouth breathes in only soil. My hands still fist, my eyes still blink...my heart still beats, less than one beat per second, but it's still there. Somehow my body remains mine, I'm not just a spirit whose soul torn asunder haunts the living. But don't all sinners leave it all behind? Their bodies and their minds? Isn't there someone who judges me first? It is all so smothering whatever afterlife this is.'

This was his new spacious abode, not an onyx tomb nor a bed of nails. There weren't any crows to pick at his carcass bit by bit for all the juicy parts but warm earth fertile with worms. How he detested worms. Their bodies were slimy and phallic like Freeza's wandering fingers. Here his bones would become jellied and his face would become bloated by decomposition. Here regret would gnaw at his pride in partnership with the worms gnawing at his flesh.

"No one will forgive me for the things I have done, and I will never forgive myself for the things that I have not." That should have been all he heard, for death promised him many punishments among them timeless solitude with only his thoughts resounding on his own private frequency.

It was not still yet the wind was silent. There was a symphony of sound from somewhere high above, the clash of titans like the fabric of the heavens itself was being ripped apart.

All at once, he realized where he was. Namek. He was under the ground on Namek. Kakarot or Kuririn must have buried him there. Only the dragon balls could cheat him of his meaningless death, but no more wishes could be cast. The elder Namekian had died first. So how had he been brought back? The earth rumbled all around him, with a worm falling in a cold slide across his cheek.

The world revealed itself anew to him, but from the inside out. The demons above were Kakarot and Freeza, fighting in a parade of Armageddon. He couldn't wait here in this purgatory between being and nothingness for a breeze to carry him to the arena of their battle. He couldn't wait here while his lungs threatened to evacuate his chest with worms being his only accomplices. No, not him, not Vegeta, the Prince of all Saiyans.

That thirst to live drove his heart to the bottom while simultaneously lifting his pride to the top to reclaim his breath. The worms crisped from his body from the heat of his ki. His hands shovelled through the dirt until one hand shot through the surface of the earth like a baby's head crowning during birth. The dirt heaved violently around him until his entire body was removed from his grave and he became a revenant resurrected into a baptism of fire. The mossy sky of Namek had swapped to black that was paved by the flames of ki from the duel. Before he could charge over there, the entire planet passed away and he was transported to a field whose grass had already once borne his footprints.

...

Vegeta traversed the many halls of Capsule Corp. In its enormity, the compound was like an entire world sealed in on itself, mimicking the city-wide span of one of Freeza's ships. However, everything at Capsule Corp. looked horrible to him, for he had adapted to having an emptiness around him like a man without a shadow, with only a halo-free aura, but everything here at all hours of the day was vibrant and bustling.

A group of Namekians on a floor below were playing, their squeals climbing up to him jolly and uncorrupted by their recent episode with Freeza. It must have been so easy to live, safe in the knowledge that whatever mishaps came their way that their dragon balls would save them, would brush their worries aside as readily as a complex problem chalked onto a blackboard could be swept away. A life of constant do-overs and remedial lessons. Vegeta didn't know whether to envy them or to be disgusted.

He had indeed been wished back to life. The Earthlings had squandered their bonus wishes not on power but on flight. Using Earth's dragon balls, they had wished for everyone killed by the events of the uprising on Namek to be revived, minus Freeza's men. That was how he had returned to life, on only the slightest of technicalities, for his treason had made him no longer included as one of Freeza's men. The dragon had separated him from them as his own mercenary, as a last samurai.

The final wish had been directed towards the transport of all living beings, except for Kakarot and Freeza, from Namek to Earth, into that field with the grass that was so vividly green. He had been furious to have been teleported against his will from the fight that would determine the fate of the galaxy.

But that half-breed whelp, the son of Kakarot, had foretold the outcome of the match. Gohan had stolen a look at a Saiyan god, and although his vision should have burned away, he had survived with starry eyes to regale them with what he had witnessed, that Kakarot was now a Super Saiyan. A Super Saiyan. So Kakarot had done it. He would defeat Freeza.

And Vegeta was swamped in muck, feeling like the soil from his grave was being thrown over his head once again. Kakarot, not him, the prince, but Kakarot out of all possible Saiyans had ascended. That fact keyed across his mettle, leaving nothing behind. God, he would have to kill him. Kakarot needed to die and he had to be the one to do it. He had to kill the Super Saiyan, the myth of his people to hold on to his tattered pride.

But was Kakarot already dead? Killed not by Freeza, but perhaps by the explosion of Namek? Kakarot had no functioning ship, so would he be left to drift in the vacuum of space? That would not be a warrior's death. It would irritate Vegeta to no end that a Super Saiyan who could defeat Freeza would fall to the forces of nature. Super Saiyans shouldn't have to comport to those rules.

Sufficient time had passed for Kakarot to return to Earth if by some miracle he had commandeered a ship, but whatever his fate, he could still be brought back too. The dragon balls only had a month left to recharge. Once Kakarot was wished to Earth, Vegeta could send him back to whatever hell he had been saved from. All he could do was wait, so wait he did.

His whole life now consisted of disjointed pockets of time where he would walk around Capsule Corp. to try to outpace the accidental byproduct of his continued being. The activity of his life slowed to a funeral march, so much so that he could observe it all, partitioned from it even though it was his own life, still by still, where any mute address and any minute movement seemed to stretch across an entire day. Imprisoned by his mind as he made his dreary rounds of the grounds, like past security patrols aboard Freeza's ship, he lamented circumstances that could not be helped. His subterranean existence of missions and purges had been replaced by the wildebeest stampede of light and noise, the laughter and murmurings of a happy home. It was jarring to be cast adrift in such a complete landscape, the surrealism of it compared to the blood-splattered portraits of his past.

As he chased after lost time, his lost youth, his lost ambitions, the hallway indoors merged into an outside path. He crossed the gardens unseeingly, not noting the orange ball, whose shape and size was almost exactly like a Namekian dragon ball, veer into his path and bounce across his legs.

A Namekian urchin ran into view, all smiles which froze into terror, when he saw that his ball had hit the murderer of that one village. The child's eyes welled with tears, he let loose a small yelp like a fowl having its neck snapped. The child started to cry afoul in earnest and a woman zoomed to him from behind some rose bushes.

"There you are, I found you," she exclaimed, "no one beats me at hide and seek. What? Why are you crying?" She looked across the trail, finally noticing Vegeta, and glared at him. "Don't be such a bully Vegeta-kun, give the kid his ball back."

Vegeta-kun, the same honorific she had used to address him that day in the field, that Freeza's soldiers would tease him with, that sounded like tongues or words spoken backwards when said by someone as weak as her.

" _Why don't you come too, Vegeta-kun? It's not like you have money for a hotel."_

That random invitation for shelter at her house, he had accepted it along with the Namekian refugees. The woman was Kakarot's friend, so when he returned, she would know, so in turn Vegeta would know too, as long as he kept close. That was primarily why he had accepted the invitation; it had been unexpected that Capsule Corp. had more than adequate lodgings and provisions to meet his needs as well.

That woman though, one minute fearing for her life as she saw him fight Zarbon, the next calling out to him in cutesy sobriquets and now bossing him around. Bulma was strange and terrible to him, maybe more than anything else he had so far encountered on Earth. She was a silk strand chafing against his steel wool, and was nowhere near as fragile as he had first thought. He never knew how to react to the changes in her moods.

Vegeta growled nastily, kicking the ball aside with the urchin zipping after it. Bulma gave him one last glare before running after the child, and he looked at her wildly worked hair that was curled into multiple whirlpools, that seemed to stylize her anger at him. Vegeta took a second to watch her whirlpooled hair current across the gardens into the clear blue sky and then he resumed his trek.

Earth's other name must have been the planet of misfit Saiyans. Kakarot had crash-landed there and had been raised there. It was also the site of Raditz and Nappa's dishonourable deaths. Would Kakarot and himself die here too? he wondered as he walked alone.

At night, the usual ache of cold would soften up his bones and chill his blood. And it was so easy to forget that light existed and that it was possible to be warm. "Where are you Kakarot? How did you do it? Why did it have to be you?" This was the hellish lullaby his mind used to sing himself to sleep.

...

The day had come where the dragon balls had reactivated and the dragon could be summoned. A Namekian had shouted the incantation in their language, and Vegeta had tried to commit the sounds to memory in case of future need.

Vegeta was behind the curved exterior of one of Capsule Corp.'s buildings, as he glanced out from the shadow of his black lethargy towards the bizarre scene in front of him. The dragon balls had been arranged in a circle on the lawn, and once the passcode had been spoken, the daylight sky had turned to midnight and a serpentine body had sprouted from the earth and into the clouds.

The dragon looked down imperially at the group of humans and Namekians like they were unbuffed pennies diminishing the shine of a pile of gold. Vegeta craned his neck to get a better look at the colossal figure. The dragon was a long green and yellow whip cracking across the dark sky with five-claws per hand and with razor sharp horns.

Vegeta knew the Namekian dragon could enact three wishes, and he was debating whether he should steal a wish for himself. Yet the wish for immortality, that he had not long ago so desired, had lost its lustre. Freeza was dead, an immortal wasn't required to achieve it, only a Saiyan on the lowest rungs of their species hierarchy had been necessary. Something bothered him that Kakarot had never dithered with wishes and chance like he had, but had banked only on himself, on his own strength.

The first wish was stated to return the spirits of Kuririn and Goku to Earth. And the dragon revealed that it could only perform half of that wish since the one called Goku was still alive.

Vegeta felt a ball of mildewed phlegm ride up his throat. Kakarot had survived? But how?

The Earthlings cheered that their protector was still alive somewhere out there, then chatted quietly together. What to wish for now? How to phrase it? There were no issues with restoring Kuririn to life, so they did just that.

Kuririn instantly appeared before them in armour that Porunga had so graciously mended. How extraordinary, Vegeta concluded even though he had already experienced it all firsthand himself, the wishes really can come true, they can bring back the dead.

Their final wish was to deliver Kakarot back to Earth, but there was a long pause for consultation between the dragon and an invisible body. "That I cannot do," he finally pronounced.

All the Earthlings muttered in disbelief amongst themselves, not used to the dragon not being able to solve every one of their problems. And Vegeta stared at the dragon with such rapt attention that could have burned.

The dragon elaborated, "The one you call Goku refuses to be summoned here, he says he is not yet ready to return."

The Earthlings congregated again, arguing about this change in the script to their carefully worded wishes.

Time pressed on while Vegeta grit his teeth down hard into sharp points. Kakarot's delay was not due to death or some unfortunate consequence of a lack of transportation but was no doubt because he was training, getting stronger and acquiring new skills, although he was already a Super Saiyan and that should have been the ceiling to his success. Vegeta wasn't even a Super Saiyan yet but what had he accomplished in the past 130 days? Nothing. Kakarot was bettering himself while he dallied here waiting to steal wishes, to wish upon stars and mythical dragons when he could be getting stronger on his own, the Saiyan way.

Porunga made an impatient noise, "What's your final wish?"

That dragon casked in the dragon balls like a genie in a bottle, who always acted so superior when it couldn't even escape its prison on its own, didn't even appreciate or enjoy the few minutes of freedom it got. And here Vegeta had believed that all djinns yearned for freedom.

With a sudden stimulus, like a force applied too vigorously from brake to gas, Vegeta decided that his dream-like paralysis would tranquilize him no more, and he would go find Kakarot and fight him. Vegeta reversed from the dragon, not interested in the last wish and ran to a landing dock in the backyard where there was a ship, fuelled and ready to go for when Chi Chi herself had wanted to voyage to Namek to bring Gohan back to safety. It didn't take long for Vegeta to have the ship flying towards freedom, and as the ship sped upwards, the sphere reflected like a grey pupil in the red eyes of the waiting dragon.

...

Vegeta had returned to Capsule Corp after aborting his campaign to retrieve and murder Kakarot. He had scoured through space for him, combing over planets for signs of his presence as thoroughly as combing through hair for eggs of lice. But there were no traces, not even a golden hair, of Kakarot anywhere. Vegeta would have still been out there, maddeningly panning for Super Saiyan gold, but practicalities had forced him to return to Earth. His ship required maintenance, and he wasn't going to float adrift through space in a broken ship in the slim hope that Kakarot would run into him. No, he could do that more comfortably on Earth. Although waiting for Kakarot to grace them with his presence left a sour taste in his mouth, there was no other option.

But after his landing, he didn't have to wait long for Kakarot...along with an unexpected and most unwelcome guest. There was a second Super Saiyan. A teenager who was as unlikely a candidate in his appearance to be a Super Saiyan as Kakarot was in his demeanour. Yet he had appeared out of nowhere and had killed Freeza once and for all, with the finality that Kakarot didn't have, like it was child's play. That corkscrew of abasement twisted in Vegeta's stomach again.

The youth did not reveal his name or his origins, only that he was from the future and he prescribed to all of the Z senshi assembled there pre-packaged doses of humbling reality and words of warning. In three years time, androids would arrive on a nearby island. The androids would be perfectly engineered killing machines with the express purpose of enacting revenge on Kakarot for destroying their creator's army many years before. They would all fight and fall, Super Saiyans just fun little light-up toys in comparison to their everlasting energy - all except for Kakarot, who would not even get the opportunity to fight. He would succumb to a heart virus first.

Vegeta had predicted it, that nature would claim Kakarot before he ever could. But never fear, the boy from the future had taken measures to circumvent this and had given Kakarot an antidote to the virus. In exchange, he had begged Kakarot, and how wrong it was to see a Super Saiyan beg, to train, to prepare, to destroy the androids, to give hope to the future. So they all vowed to train to prevent that future from occurring.

More humiliation nailed into Vegeta, so much so that nails were being hammered into pre-existing nails. He would have the chance to fight Kakarot and win and he would most certainly not be offed by a machine. He would commence the very same training regimen that Kakarot had used to achieve the legendary.

From overheard scraps of conversation, he had figured out how Kakarot had done it. The ship that he had taken to Namek had been equipped with its very own gravity chamber. Kakarot had only trained under the force of 100 gs for one week, but that was all he had needed to ascend. That ship though had been left behind on Namek and had exploded along with the rest of the planet. But no matter, the inventor of that miraculous technology resided on Earth, in fact, he shared the very same roof with Vegeta.

"The gravitational device that you built for Kakarot, it had an upper limit of 100 gs, correct?"

"Yes, Vegeta-san."

"But it would be possible to increase the limit?"

"Theoretically yes, but 100 gs was already pushing the boundaries of what Saiyan anatomy could withstand. I knew Goku would be careful though and wouldn't abuse the gravitation."

"For Saiyans only Super Saiyan is the limit. You will build me another one of these gravitational ships that will have the capacity to reach 300 gs."

"300 gs? Oh dear, Vegeta, it would be unethical to build you something that extreme."

"And why is that?"

"Under the force of 300 gs, let's say that your total body mass was 50 kg, your body would weigh close to 15 tonnes. Hypergravity puts a massive strain on all of your body's functions...you would not survive 300 gs for long if at all."

"So you're saying you won't build it because I'm not strong enough?…"

Her father's quiet words of reservation traveled down the corridor to her office like the final drafts of a dying wind. On the other hand, Vegeta's words spun in a twister of sound as her father continued to gently refuse his request and he only became louder at the mention of Son-kun in comparison to him.

What's he up to? That cautionary tale that the boy from the future had told them, which forecast everyone's deaths, must have rocked him to the core. I guess he's coming up with some sort of strategy to avoid that.

Bulma went back to the day when she had suggested that Vegeta come stay at her house. The invitation had tumbled from her mouth, bypassing common sense, with an impulsiveness that was so typically her. In that moment, she had completely forgotten that he was a ruthless killer. She only remembered that he had provided them with an original wish to transport their dead's souls back to Earth first before they were revived. And under the shade of the baobab tree, he very much resembled a swashbuckling Byronic hero, who was scornful of everything but carried a heavy misery in his heart. Bulma was taken in by that tragic romance like a moth backwardly drawn to the dark and not the light. So he had come with her, this ticking time bomb of a man that everyone tried to avoid but that overtime she suspected had become inert.

They all knew he was a villain and he was completely unapologetic about it, yet he had done nothing so far to add to that villainy, which ran counter to all of their expectations. He had just been a brooding malcontent watching over them, developing images of life on Earth onto his retinas, hardly ever speaking, and when he did, his vocabulary had been almost entirely comprised of grunts and obscenities.

For the duration of his stay at Capsule Corp., Vegeta could be typified by a mortal slowness. The world in which he lived had been gutted, and the innards representing the unforgiving manifesto of his youth had been left to rot. He had responded to all those life changing events with a loss of stasis. Something had failed to compute in his mind that Son-kun was now of a higher rank than him; thus, two conflicting worldviews coexisted in an unresolvable inconsistency in his mind where he tried to make sense of the nonsensical, of a destiny and vengeance denied.

Bulma had noticed the cumulus hanging above him, but it had scattered ever since the day the dragon had been summoned. He had rigged himself to some new vision that would strike oil, where eventually the black gold of a Super Saiyan would shoot up from his body, and his body alone, in splendor. That motivation had only intensified upon learning of the impending arrival of the androids and that there were now two Super Saiyans not just one to contend with.

She had been curious about what he was going to do, since none of them had opted to take her very sound advice to wish for the death of Dr. Gero so that the androids would never be created. So his solution was gravity.

She tapped angrily away on her computer, not noticing that she had left the cap locks key on and her text was all capitalized. They were all battle hungry maniacs, fight junkies who didn't care about the Earth or even worse, about her beautiful privileged self, and that she might not get to live all of her dreams because they wanted a good fight. Kuririn had tried to placate her by reminding her that Piccolo and especially Vegeta, were unpredictable and there was no telling what they would do if they didn't have a common enemy to unite them. And now they were bringing her father into the mix.

She was brought back from her thoughts by the sound of a chair scraping across the floor, and then she couldn't hear her father or Vegeta anymore. That couldn't be good. The daddy's girl in her came out to defend. She saved the document she had been typing on her computer, and raced down the corridor from her office to her father's lab.

Bulma came into the open doorway of her father's lab and was greeted with a startling scene. Her father's computer chair was overturned and he had his hands up over his head in the universal symbol of surrender. Vegeta was marching towards her dad, outfitted once more in his villainy.

Bulma stepped in between them, her tone matching a strict, no nonsense school teacher. "What is the meaning of this? You don't just get to order people around Vegeta."

Vegeta took her in, with an initial reaction of no more Vegeta-kun then? But he cleared the thought from his head. He pointed to Dr. Brief, "The old man is going to prepare a gravity machine for me, just like the one, no, better than the one he made for Kakarot."

"You've already stolen Capsule Corp. property. You took our ship for months on end and brought it back in awful condition too. I think we've done enough for a space pirate such as you Vegeta."

Vegeta was about to offer his rebuttal, when Dr. Brief spoke up timidly.

"It will get done Vegeta-san. A ship with the capability to reach 300 gs..."

"Daddy no," Bulma protested, "don't let this alien push you around."

Vegeta gave a smile of a scoundrel, proven right once again that you could achieve anything with the threat of violence. But that smile quickly inverted as Dr. Brief finished his statement

"….and Bulma will design the ship for you."

Bulma regarded her father like he had lost his mind. The mind of a genius always teetered on the brink of madness, maybe her father had finally fallen off it. "But daddy," she whined, her voice rolling back the years to a childish tantrum.

"Bulma," he said rather sternly, "you know how busy I am right now. Vegeta-san is your guest, you invited him here, and your mother would be so upset if she found out that you weren't treating a guest kindly."

Her father must have learned that line from her mother's mouth because proper etiquette was her mother's forté.

"You did ask me for a project the other day too. Now I have an investor's meeting to attend, which you told me you had no interest in, so help the young man out. Your mother also informed me that Vegeta-san helped save your life on Namek, so you do owe him."

Owe him? Bulma thought angrily, an eye for an eye to make him blind, that's what I owe him. Leave it to her ditzy mother to construct her own dime store narrative of her daughter's misadventures on Namek that had not even an inkling of truth in it. Certainly, nobody would have corrected her fiction with the facts about Vegeta's murderous exploits, and now her mom was poisoning her dad with her misinformation.

"But, but," Bulma sputtered, as she watched her father shuffle from his lab with his oversized lab coat brushing against the floor. She couldn't remember the last time he had made her do something she didn't want to do. It was so unfair and it was all Vegeta's fault.

Speaking of the devil, she'd have to spell it out for him in terms that even a dumb monkey would understand, that she wasn't going to do a thing for him. Bulma turned to Vegeta, and he had a rather odd look spread across his face, unused to anyone, not even a loon like Bulma's mom, erroneously giving him the title of saviour.

He saw Bulma's cheeks puff up with all the arguments she was going to offload on him, so he beat her to it, his demands were far more important than whatever baseless objections she had.

"You will convince your father to build the gravity ship."

"Huh?" Bulma muttered, with her blow-up imploding back in on herself. "Neither me nor my father are making you anything Vegeta."

"You?" Vegeta came a bit closer to her, rating her critically, from her permed hair down to her tight striped dress that was visible from underneath her unbuttoned lab coat. "You are not capable. I want a gravity adaptable ship not a dollhouse."

First Bulma was struck with the insult of his misogyny. Did he not find her capable because she was a woman? Yes, she was a woman, but don't let my beauty and clothes fool you, that's just a superficial surface, underneath that I'm much more formidable. You'll see that soon enough Vegeta. But then she realized that he wasn't aiming a general disrespect to her sex, it was a much more personalized slight to herself. And that did wound her vanity a little.

What bothered her even more though was that he wasn't launching an attack on her from some outdated Saiyan way of thinking, but from his silent watch he had crossed her out as insignificant. And worst of all, she had wanted to haughtily dismiss him as inferior to her, but he had beaten her to it, in the tortoise sprinting past the hare fashion.

She didn't realize that she had also moved closer to him as she began to strike back. "I'm not building any dollhouses unless I have you as a doll to play with. I have a shrink ray ready just for this that can bring you down to size. And you better believe the dollhouse will be hot pink just like that shirt."

Vegeta's jaw jutted forward angrily. He hated that pink badman shirt...yet he still wore it on occasion. He assessed her again, coming to the conclusion that she was every bit as superficial and trifling as she was trying to disclaim. "Convince your father to construct it for me...or else," he said dangerously.

Bulma knew she should defuse the situation but with Vegeta acting so entitled, she decided to escalate things instead. "Or else what?" she countered. "You try anything and I'll have Son-kun on your back in the same second."

In a millisecond, her back had hit the wall, her feet were suspended from the ground as her own worldview escaped out from her in a gasp, to be replaced by abominable treatment the likes of which she had never experienced before. Vegeta was holding her by the neck against the wall, all he could see was red.

Was she really so craven that she would sound the alarm for Kakarot to save her and that she actually believed that Kakarot could do anything against him? He had somehow expected more from her. He thought she had a little more gumption than that. In his rage, Vegeta momentarily forgot that Kakarot was currently above him in power and he had no memories past his first trip to Earth.

"Did you know," he whispered, his voice dripping with disdain, "that Kakarot has never defeated me in battle? That Kakarot, his brat, the bald one and that coward who cut off my tail all banded together yet they still couldn't defeat me?" Vegeta relaxed his grip on Bulma's throat, so that she could respond but her reply was not to his liking.

"But you didn't win?" she coughed. "Didn't you end up retreating though? Didn't Son-kun beg Kuririn to spare your life?"

Those friends of hers talked too much. What had happened to the warrior code? She wasn't supposed to be arguing with him but should have been silenced into submission. "Can't that puny brain of yours understand that I wasn't the loser in that match? Kakarot didn't win!" he yelled.

"You didn't win either." Tears spontaneously watered from her eyes from the stress of her cut off breath. "It was a stalemate, so as a result, anything you try to do to me will be cancelled out by Son-kun."

Vegeta toughened the hand around her neck, drawing closer so he could see the fear in her eyes that went beyond her impudent words. "Are you sure about that? Where's Kakarot to save you now? Not quick enough, not perceptive enough, not caring enough to come to your rescue. Please tell me, give me one reason why I shouldn't choke you to death right now."

His eyes were deep and dark and merciless, just like the darkness under her bed that she had been scared of when she was younger. Those eyes belonged to the monster under the bed, to that voice from beneath the pillow. But such monsters didn't actually exist, there was nothing to fear at all, just like with Vegeta. She just had to remember to keep telling herself that. She was superior to him and she would demonstrate it right now.

"Because if you had had me on your side," she said in an uneven breath, "you would have become immortal and defeated Freeza yourself." The red in Vegeta's face drained to white as Bulma continued.

"I am the inventor of the dragon radar, while you hopped from village to village on Namek trying to find the dragon balls, I already knew where they all were at all times. With my help, you could have collected all the dragon balls before the Ginyu force even arrived, before Freeza even knew what hit him. You could have even taken the dragon radar for yourself, but no, Gohan told me you mistook the radar for a watch! Of course, you wouldn't have ever thought that Earthlings would possess such sophisticated technology."

Vegeta dropped her to the floor, that had the impact of powerlessness.

"Everything could have been different, the wishes could have been yours, if only you'd had me. You wasted the chances you didn't even know you had. What do you think?" She stood up right in front of him, on the same level. "Pretty impressive for just a doll," she ended, as Vegeta seemed to crumple like a paper tiger beside her. Hands on hips, she asked, "So are you done throwing stones when you live in a glass house?"

Vegeta assessed her differently this time under an unfogged lens. "Earth woman, you will build me the gravity ship, except you will make it up to 500 gs now."

And then it was Bulma's turn to smile with villainy as she had got him to reconsider her. In the end, everyone submitted to the power of her intelligence and danced her dance. She rubbed at her throat. "Oh yeah, I don't think so. Who do you think you are anyways? You can't just manhandle a lady like that and expect to receive anything in return."

He snarled, stretching his body higher until he was taller than her. "Vegeta, Prince of all Saiyans. And who are you to defy me?"

"I'm Bulma, Princess of Earth. This is my world, you're just lucky enough to be living in it."

He stared at her unconvinced.

"Yes, I'm Bulma, and you will call me by my name, I know you know it." That was the respect she commanded.

"Bulma," he said her name as if it were a stubborn piece of dirt stuck to his boot. "No harm shall befall you during these three years if you do exactly as I command, it's simple really."

"And after those three years?" Bulma asked astutely.

Vegeta didn't respond but she saw his cheekbones rise like the blade of a guillotine in malice.

Bulma headed for the door, she'd worry about that after the three years were up. "Ok whatever, small fry," she said as she pushed past him to leave the room.

Vegeta's cheekbones crashed down without a victim to behead. Who was she calling small fry? What was that anyways? Was she making fun of his height? She was just as short as he was!

"What's a small fry?"

She turned back, regarding him snobbishly from head to foot. "Just a bottom feeder."

Somehow he knew that she was insulting him, he just didn't understand the exact context.

"Remember 500 gs," he reiterated, unable to think of a more threatening comeback.

...

A monkey with a tanned muzzle that faded into a coat of white scampered wildly across Bulma's desk. It then sprang upwards and wrapped its tail around an upper support beam and after it lowered itself cheekily by its tail to peer back down at her.

"You certainly are agile, monkey, but that's because I made you that way." Bulma called the monkey down to sit obediently on top of her desk.

This was just one of her newest and zaniest creations. She had recreated the spitting image of a capuchin monkey all out of inorganic materials. At first she had just wanted to see if she could make a cute companion but she was seeing a further use towards the replacement of living service animals with mechanical ones.

"Ok, monkey, now go fetch me a pencil, I got a flowsheet that I have to draft." Bulma beamed at the robot as it not only brought her a pencil but had freshly sharpened it too.

She hadn't been working on her diagram for long before she heard a commotion and a loud banging, like something was being pulled from its hinges near the front entrance to the labs, which was followed by shouts for security.

That could only mean one thing. Her most charming Saiyan guest needed something. "Monkey," she ordered, "go open the door for that other monkey before he tears this one down too." The robot obeyed, easily opening the doors, it being much stronger than it looked, just like Vegeta. It was just in time too, because Vegeta was right there as the door opened.

He scowled at her and Bulma had to cover her mouth from laughing because today he really did resemble a grumpy dwarf.

Vegeta caught the monkey peeking at him from behind the door with disturbingly human-like eyes.

Bulma explained as she saw Vegeta completely baffled by her invention. "It's a helper monkey, you know to do chores and other stuff around the house."

Vegeta looked even more annoyed at this explanation. Was Bulma mocking the oozaru with this fluffy travesty that she was using as a monkey butler?

That reinforced his anger about why he had even come to her lab in the first place. It had been a week and as far as he could tell no work had started yet on his gravity chamber. It should have already been completed by now. He was being too lenient with these Earthlings.

He opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by Bulma's phone ringing. Bulma ignored Vegeta as he practically ignited into a blaze of rage and picked it up.

"Everything's fine here," she told her secretary, "I'm just having a small pest problem but I can handle it. Just get someone down in construction to install a new door to the labs, thanks." She put down her phone, and regarded Vegeta with a syrupy sweetness. "What can I do for you today?"

Vegeta tried to speak but his words first came out as a biting growl before he remastered his speech. "The gravity ship," Vegeta hissed. "Where is it? Is it done?"

"Oh that," Bulma said blithely, "it's in the pre-production stage."

"Pre-production? So that means nothing's been done?"

"I wouldn't phrase it like that," she put a pensive finger to her cheek considering, "but effectively yes."

"Why hasn't it been completed?"

"I've been busy."

They both saw the monkey stop in front of them to perform a little dance.

"Doing what? Making dancing monkeys?" Vegeta raged, a vein twitching in his forehead.

"Haven't you had enough buffoonery from Kakarot?"

"Ok," she conceded, "because I didn't feel like doing it." She looked up at him, batting her long bambi eyelashes, as if she were going to ask for forgiveness, but then her mouth turned up cruelly and her eyelashes took on the form of black spider legs. "I don't take kindly to threats."

"But I'm the Prince of all Saiyans, you will do exactly as I say, the androids..."

Bulma reclined her chair, letting herself become more comfortable, it would take a while before Vegeta tired himself out. Bulma's eyes glazed over as Vegeta layered her with tiers of embellished threats. A device that she had monitoring the progression of her nanocrystal synthesis dinged on the other side of the lab.

Bulma got up from her chair as Vegeta was in the middle of his diatribe, and walked over to the row of fumehoods. She turned off the heat and removed the boiling flask from its oil bath. Perfect, she thought as she inspected the white product.

"Are you listening to me?" Vegeta growled from behind her back.

Bulma turned back towards him, she had a few minutes to kill before her product would cool down to room temperature and she could work it up, so why not goad Vegeta until then? "Barely. You're the Prince of all Saiyans, you need to train to defeat the androids, Kakarot, revenge, blah, blah," she echoed dully. She then flashed Vegeta the most vomitous smile.

His voice took on the texture of velvet wrapped around metal, as he approached her. "Remember Bulma, I can kill you anytime I want."

Bulma's eyes rolled back so far that she could see her own thoughts. She approached him too. "There's nothing you can do to me."

Her eyelashes were too long, like the feelers of creepy crawlies that were reaching out for him. Vegeta remembered the worms gliding up his body as he lay in his grave.

In that same sweet, honeytrap voice, Bulma said, "You remember what that boy from the future said? That a virus would have ended Son-kun? It would only take a virus nestling into his heart to kill him, who's to say a virus wouldn't do the same to you? You're a Saiyan just like him. I could replicate that virus, manipulate its genetics to make it more lethal and produce a vector to transport it into your body so that it could infect all of your cells. What could you do against that? Do you know how to combat something on a microscopic scale?"

Vegeta looked at her quizzically but didn't respond so Bulma steamrolled ahead.

"I thought not. You're only effective when something big and scary is right in front of you, and even then..." her voice trailed off derisively, calling up pictures of Freeza. "You may be master of the macroscopic, but I am master of both the macroscopic and microscopic. I know exactly who you are Vegeta. There's always at least one of you out there. You're just an anachronism, a cosmological constant, something arrogantly lauded, like you're the divine answer to everything, like you're the best bet, but just plain wrong. You're attached to a classical view of the world when a superior theory is available."

Vegeta was unsure of what to make of this little speech. Was she comparing him unfavourably to Kakarot in a very convoluted way and was she also threatening him?

"And I'll be here to disprove you and to point out all your weaknesses. I'm smarter than you are strong. I'm already at the top of my field, so you better learn to not threaten me."

Vegeta finally grabbed her, hooking his hand across the back of her skull, and letting her voluminous hair fall against his rough hand. "Oh? What good are your smarts when I crush your skull and your brains shoot out?"

Bulma touched him lightly, with just one finger on the arm that was clutching her head. "How do you know that I didn't just kill you now by transferring a virus to you via nanobots on my fingertips? How do you know that I didn't just sign your death warrant with a long sickness or something short and painful? You don't, only I'll know, and I won't tell," she announced in a whisper, putting her index finger to her lips.

Vegeta scratched his arm agitatedly. He had been taken aback. "I would force your father or some other scientist to reverse it."

Bulma shook her head. "Vegeta, you don't get it. They wouldn't be able to help you because I'm smarter than them too. By the time they'd figure something out, you'd already be dead in the ground."

"I don't have to eat anything you provide; nor will you touch me again."

"Ahh, Vegeta," she poked him in the bare chest without him making a move to stop her. "But you can't prevent yourself from breathing, and all I need to kill you is one breath. Although, maybe it would be better to accelerate the aging process in you. Saiyans are freaks. You stay youthful until a ripe old age so that you can stay in your prime for battle. But what if I remake you as a 30 year old with the body of an 80 year old? I could make a mutagen that could go into your cells and shorten your telomeres that would result in advancing your old age, to make a sort of Saiyan progeria. Wouldn't that be fun? Wouldn't you feel so very strong?"

Bulma's hand joined his on the back of her skull. "Now don't stand there and tell me that any of your murders were half as creative as that."

"You wouldn't do that, you're _good_ just like Kakarot."

"Am I?" she challenged.

Her voice that had all this time been sweet turned burning hot. She dug her nails into his hand that somehow only made him loosen his grip upon her. "Don't underestimate me, don't say you could murder me in cold blood when I could just as easily do the same to you, if you displease me that is. My death for you won't be all bloody and crude either, it will be a stab in the back from a faceless assassin."

Vegeta was momentarily dogged into silence by her, so much confidence, and they called him arrogant.

Good monkey, maybe you do know when to back off after all, Bulma thought triumphantly.

But Vegeta couldn't let her win just like that. She had her weaknesses too, they were scattered all around her, not just in her weak body but in trivial things, in objects that were worthless but had meaning to her. Vegeta recovered, and with a cool calmness he said, "So I'm only effective when it comes to things on a large scale?"

"Pretty much," Bulma confirmed, "you have no subtlety, no nuance, no substance…"

"How's this for a large scale then?" He tossed everything off her work bench, with the mass spectrometer and her electrophoresis chambers crashing to the floor. He snatched the capuchin monkey and squeezed it until its anthropomorphic eyes burst.

"My prototype," Bulma said outraged.

Vegeta headed back to the fumehood where her nanocrystals were cooling. Oh no, he wouldn't, it had taken her weeks to optimize that reaction. She ran to the fumehood, beating his slow, assured gait. "Don't even think about it Vegeta," she warned as he joined her, with his hands lifting up the sash.

Bulma desperately looked for a weapon and then she spotted the Erlenmeyer flask of aqua regia sitting in the fumehood. Aqua regia, royal water, what she had been using to clean metal residue from off her stir bars but was also a strong enough acid to dissolve gold, and would be absolutely perfect to coronate a prince into a king. If Vegeta continued, maybe she'd dump the entire flask over him...

Vegeta reached for her nanocrystals and Bulma reached for the aqua regia. She tried to pour it over his head but before she could, with a small flow of ki, Vegeta had vaporized it all back into its separate components of nitric and hydrochloric acid. She saw the yellow orange liquid transform into colourless fumes that were eaten up by the ventilation in the fumehood. And Bulma was reminded of Vegeta's power, of all he was capable of, just from his fingertips too.

She felt it then, the reuptake and release of adrenaline coursing through her, as she shivered yet sweated, with her brain pounding the message, help, help, run, run as fast as you can, but she stayed firmly in place.

Vegeta gripped her again, he sniffed the air and detected something wonderful. Fear. Bulma's fear. He could taste her fear, the one that makes your tongue feel like it's encased in mud, that coats your mouth in that metallic fretful taste, that enlarges your pupils, that paralyzes your muscles and that gives you that sensational anxiety-driven panic attack. But her fear didn't smell like any other fear. Oh no, it was better, much better. Hers was a fear alloyed with defiance. It was a kind of fearless fear, a fear in spite of itself that although she had grown out of it, still reared its head under duress like a twang in her speech or a lisp, a fear that was only expressed as a reflex from a history of being prey, while her more evolved mind tried to convince her that there was nothing to fear. He sniffed her again, some merchant could make a fortune bottling that smell. There was no better smell than an enemy's fear.

Bulma wasn't sure what he was doing. "What are you, a dog now Vegeta? Go sniff up someone else's ass. I'm still not doing a thing for you. You'll have to at least give me some sad puppy dog eyes and kiss ass first."

He held her closer with his eyes looking down into hers from beneath a web of black silken threads, as he whispered to her with sanctimonious joy, "You're scared of me." The little genius was scared of him, so he'd be able to make her do as he pleased.

"I'm not scared of you," she denied, even though her voice wobbled as she said it.

"You're scared of me," he stated matter-of-factly. Vegeta kept one hand on her and the other around the boiling flask, ready to throw it to the floor. "So will you agree to build it now?"

Bulma couldn't bear to lose the fruit of her labour. She nodded slowly at him.

"What was that? I couldn't hear you," he said as he dropped the flask lower to the floor.

"Ok, I'll do it you monkey bastard."

Her forced obedience was the nicest thing for him to hear, and he had hardly had to put in any effort to earn it. "You have one week," he said, as he reclamped her flask back to its stand.

Vegeta exited the lab while Bulma's eyes emitted charged particles of gamma radiation at his back. Here she was, lady bountiful, taking him in like a stray cat, and this is how he repaid her, by destroying her lab? His smug voice after getting her to agree was like shards of glass down her throat. But she wouldn't swallow it, she wouldn't swallow that he had won this round. She would keep her word, she would build the damn gravity ship for him. But unlike her father, she didn't have any ethical objections about it. In fact, she hoped the gravity chamber would become his coffin. She just had to get Vegeta back somehow and have the last word. She had been wrong to try to combat vitriol with vitriol. She knew how to neutralize strong acids and it wasn't with an olive branch but with something more basic.

It had taken Bulma five days to complete the new ship, and Vegeta had remained inside it, foregoing food, drink and sleep for just as long. Despite her prolonged refusal to even start this project for Vegeta in the first place, she had annoyingly discovered that she actually enjoyed building the ship for him and was motivated by the challenges it presented, such as, how to control high gravity in such a confined space and how to reconceive the ship's engine so that it outstripped the one she had made for the trip to Namek. Contrary to what her father had said, he had assisted her in the construction of the ship and she had even shanghaied him into explaining how the different components and programs worked to Vegeta so that she wouldn't have to. Bulma was still smarting from how Vegeta had so underhandedly outsmarted her into doing his bidding and she didn't want to face him again until she had a game plan in motion.

The ship was now stationed far into the backyard, gleaming in the sunlight like a fabergé egg with sophisticated interior compartments of wiring and design. Once the ship had been finished, Vegeta had surveyed it with all the aristocratic hauteur he possessed and finding no faults, he had booted her father back onto the lawn, slammed the door to the ship in his face, and without a word of thanks or any further pomp or ceremony had raised the gravity to 100 gs and had forced his body to adapt to the heavy atmosphere ever since.

And now Bulma was in her office, with the patience of a predator in wait, as she studied Vegeta from the live feed of the ship's security cameras. She watched the graceful clockwork of his katas and the aerial torque of his body as he made his body suffer through grueling exercises. As she watched him, she considered her options. She couldn't just kill him - even if it was just incidental that he would aid them in the fight against the androids. So biological and chemical warfare were out, and although she had so readily threatened him with that prospect, it wasn't really her style anyways. She didn't want him dead, she wasn't a murderer, but she was more of an agent provocateur and total psychological destruction of Vegeta's psyche had a dark irresistibility to it. But how to go about it? How to thoroughly unbalance this man whose existence was unmolested by the trappings of a soul and who didn't seem that attached to life anyways?

Bulma propped her legs up unladylike onto her desk as she sunk into her bonded leather chair, lit a cigarette and pondered. She had entered evil movie villain mode and all she needed was a monocle and a white persian cat on her lap to complete the picture. The answer came to her cold and factual. Attack his pride. Vegeta's pride was the only thing that mattered to him. He carried his pride around selfishly like the skin of a greying lion. Mushroom clouds of smoke clustered around her head as ideas like spores populated her mind with their destructive possibility.

Vegeta's pride was tied to his strength. His body was a compact capsule of unlimited energy and seemingly non-biodegradable parts that he was just cramming more and more power into. But what if she made it so that he thought that he was becoming weaker instead of stronger and that he couldn't surpass his limits? That would definitely push him right in front of the high-speed train of madness.

She could start small too. Just as a trial run, she would tamper with the controls of the gravity chamber. The gravity level was currently set to 100 gs, but she could remotely increase that without the reading changing in the ship. She would watch as Vegeta struggled to adjust to the growing gravity that he thought he had already mastered during these past five days. He wouldn't understand as his body collapsed under the pressure until he would be forced to admit that he was weak. It was so diabolically perfect, the perfect crime, and Vegeta wouldn't even know it was her doing it since she'd be far removed in her office, which gave her the perfect alibi as well.

She minimized the window of the security feed and opened the application for the gravity controls on her computer. She located the gravity gauge and increased it by 5 gs. It was just a small amount to test the waters and that he probably wouldn't notice. "Vegeta, you shouldn't have messed with me. I'm going to make you swirl down a drain into a septic tank of despair."

She steadily increased the gravity from 110 gs, to 120 gs, to 130 gs, to 140 gs and to 150 gs. There was nothing. No reaction. Vegeta still performed the same stunning, death-defying visuals with acrobatic precision. The runt really was strong, much stronger than she had given him credit for. Bulma blew smoke onto the screen that she imagined hitting him in the face instead. She was antsy now, she forgot about her incremental attacks and just ramped the gravity up to 200 gs. He couldn't just remain unaffected by that.

The series of backflips that he had been doing with superhuman ease fell out of sync and he staggered and tripped onto the floor. He roughly picked himself up with a growl and tried to continue his routine, but he kept smashing into the floor. Bulma giggled to herself as Vegeta crashed down again, with much more severity this time. She was just waiting for him to accept that he had overexerted himself and that he needed to get some rest while he would be bedeviled with questions about how he had suddenly become so much weaker.

As Bulma observed him, the cigarette burned low between her fingers, but he didn't get back up. His body curled into itself on the floor, and he looked small and dismal, like a mouse who had just been fronting as the king of the jungle.

Bulma felt some guilt ripple through her, she had just wanted to cause him some distress and to deflate his arrogance a bit, she hadn't intended to actually hurt him. "Vegeta, get up," she chanted to herself. But he didn't, he didn't move, he didn't resist at all as the gravity waves smacked into him. Bulma saw his leg twitch like the last motor reflex after death before rigor mortis sets in. After that, he was still.

"Vegeta?..." Bulma asked her empty office. A minute passed with no changes. What had she done? She had just been playing so haphazardly with someone else's life. She clicked the gauge of the gravitation down to 1 g, and started running out to the ship. That idiot is probably just unconscious she tried to reassure herself...

Inside the gravity chamber, Vegeta's body had the same death-like appearance that she had seen on the monitor of her computer. Bulma circled around his body, unsure of what to do, she wasn't in the business of dealing with corpses. Could a Saiyan have really been broken by her sticks and stones attack? He couldn't handle that little extra gravity?

"Vegeta?" she asked hesitantly, nudging him with her foot. No response. Bulma shifted down to her knees, and positioned her ear to his mouth - no breathing. Her hand went to his jugular - no pulse either. "Shit, shit, shit," she cursed. "You were supposed to be stronger than that Vegeta."

His body was still alive with heat though, like someone had spilled water into a vat of acid, and the exothermic reaction was now refluxing through his blood. But weren't corpses supposed to be cold? Bulma bent down to his face, flitting her hand across his cheek, that seemed to warm her up from the ice cold horror of what she had just done. "Poor guy," she said sadly, "to come back to life to just die again like this."

"Who said I was dead?"

Bulma let out a scream that could have awoken the dead. She would have leapt up from fright, but two very much alive hands locked her in place.

Vegeta's eyes opened, his black irises were two giant vaults that held more corpses than a common grave and he was just going to add her to his body count. "What were you going to do with me, Bulma?" he questioned with black humour.

"I was just making sure you were alright," she stuttered, "you haven't left this room in almost a week."

"So you're here because you care about me, not because you want to destroy me?" He squeezed her hands, and she felt red hot pain and the embarrassment of exposure sink deep within the cavities of her bones.

He had known what she had been up to, her covert operation had been naked for him to see. She had thought herself a sniper but Vegeta had outsmarted her once again and had lured her out into the open so that she would be vulnerable to attacks.

No longer under any pretexts, Bulma asked him flatly, "How'd you maintain the guise of death? I checked your vitals..."

"I belong to the most elite fighting race in the universe, breathing techniques to imitate death were all part of my education. I can even detect incremental changes in gravity. First you tried 5 gs, then a succession of 10 gs and lastly a bundle of 50 gs to make the force in here total 200 gs, isn't that right? If you had amplified the gravity up to 300 gs, you might have given me some trouble."

Such control, so much so that even the part of his brain that regulated heart rate was under his control. Bulma could only respect it. This entire time he had just been playing dead and she had fallen for it.

Suddenly, Vegeta flipped her over, so that their positions were reversed and he was now looming over her with all of his encroaching darkness.

"Seeing as you're at full health, I'll just leave you to it," Bulma said cheerfully, trying to remove herself from under him, but knowing that it wouldn't be that easy to get him to free her. Her arms and legs fluttered against him like finespun butterfly wings that couldn't camouflage her from what she had attempted to do to him.

"Do you know what I do to people that interfere with my training?"

Bulma was a butterfly caught in a jar trying to fly towards freedom, not knowing that she was trapped until death under the bioglass of his arms, that closed in on her like ever shrinking walls.

"I kill them."

Bulma was overcome with a strange, suicidal lust for laughter, and she couldn't contain it. She broke out into an uproarious, breathless fit of laughter that was pure comedic delight and had a slight sarcastic edge behind it. She couldn't explain it, but she was positive that he wouldn't kill her. It was a theory that had been solidified into law. It was as if Vegeta were an actor reading lines for a part that wasn't meant for him, and she could see how miscast he was and how poorly he had rehearsed.

The vaults of his eyes widened, revealing only emptiness and no hidden bodies within them. She was laughing at him! She was laughing at the prospect of him delivering her death. What kind of woman was she? He couched his body further onto hers, crushing the laughter out of her, and her body conformed to the weight of his hard muscles with the softness of a marshmallow.

Although he had tried to eliminate all of her sounds, Bulma could still speak in a sigh that nevertheless had strength behind it. "Here we are with these threats again, is that all you have in your arsenal? You're not a complete warrior."

"What?" Vegeta shouted, as he increased his hold on her, so she could not even flutter against him.

"You're the master of all battling arts except one - wit. You're woefully inept in a war of words. You'll huff and you'll puff, but it's all hot air. We both know you're not going to kill me, at least not now, not when I'm still useful to you, so why don't you aspire to battle me on another level, another playing field, instead of always barraging me with these idle threats? There's more than one way to be strong, why don't you show it to me? I know you can do it and it'll be much more fun for the both of us."

That palpable fear that Vegeta had noted from her when she had first entered the ship had vanished. She had been scared at the thought of him being injured, but not at him causing her death? What a crazy woman, she must be good after all. But where had her fear for him gone? It must be nearby.

He inhaled vigorously and smelled something new instead. In the witch's brew of her anger, her defiance and her promised retribution, there was something else that was almost naughty...and she became for him, lady strychnine, with a dash of bitter amandine cyanide, topped with a sprinkling of deadly nightshade, but there was no longer any fear there. He was almost disappointed, but these new smells, they tasted just as good. What he smelled was a challenge that sent a potent anticipation through him that stayed his hand and that called to him like a war horn.

A chemical imbalance started within him and Vegeta could feel the sudden hike in serotonin, the constriction of vasopressin, the antidepressant of oxycontin, the heightened sensations of DMT and the boost of testosterone all aroused within him. This must be the endocrinology of intrigue and it would be enough to keep himself from killing her - for now. If only she had feared him again, he would have killed her instantly. But with her fear long gone, killing her now just somehow felt hollow. He had to make her fear him again before he could end her.

Bulma just stared at him, waiting for him to come to the same conclusion as her, with eyes that sparked electric blue. The resemblance to a Saiyan female was uncanny despite her colouring being all wrong. And Vegeta could finally pinpoint her scent, she smelled like a Saiyan, and that scent was getting under his skin.

As Vegeta silently deliberated, Bulma felt the rise of exhilaration in her that was like the plummet from the highest point of a rollercoaster, that loop-the-loop feeling in your stomach like there is hardly any net force acting on you. With her heart racing a million beats per second, she saw Vegeta bite back a string of curses.

His eyes sparked dark energy as he said, "Try harder to kill me next time, that was just pathetic," and he slinked off her and went over to the gravity console.

Hmph, she thought, that's right Vegeta, I'm not some gilded butterfly that you can just pin down. Although the lid to the jar had been opened, Bulma didn't fly away, she hovered around the source of danger instead. Bulma rose from the floor, smoothing out the wrinkles in her lab coat. "Don't worry Vegeta, I can do better, I'll have you watching your back, just you wait and see."

"You know I'm going to kill you right after the androids are defeated?" he said while peering at her from over his shoulder.

"I look forward to thwarting your attempts."

"But for now, prove your usefulness to me, since that's the only thing keeping you alive, and make me some fighting bots."

Bulma nodded at him, she could do that for him, after all, he had just told her that he'd allow things to get more interesting around here.

...

He was still surly and taciturn, but if she called him to arms, he was now not above throwing a stinging barb her way and many times he had even left her with no zinging riposte. That rush of adrenaline that their verbal spars gave her, Bulma chased it. And as for Vegeta, he could admit that a different kind of training was beneficial for the mind. He was bored here on Earth and thus far, their verbal altercations were the source of his only entertainment, so he didn't mind obliging her every now and again. And little by little, his range also expanded beyond scare tactics. And so that was how they lived, caught between the storm and the drive that simultaneously described their own characters and the action between them.

"Hey Vegeta, you stink. Why don't you take a shower? What's it with Saiyans and not bathing regularly? There are some useful Earth inventions called soap, deodorant and cologne. You should learn to use them."

Bulma had just entered the kitchen from upstairs in search of a midnight snack and Vegeta was already seated at the table with stacks of plates around him. She had been in the mood for something sweet, but maybe something with a little more spice would suit her better. Just to take another sample to help her decide, she cut into Vegeta with her words again. "Why don't you shower immediately after training instead of eating first? You don't want to have that same stink cloud following you around for days like that time you came back from hunting for Son-kun."

In all honesty, Bulma didn't think he smelled particularly offensive, if anything, he smelled earthy and manly and like hard work.

Vegeta didn't look up from his plate when he said, "And you? You smell like rotten eggs."

"What?" Bulma went to sniff her clothes. "I was working with sulfur compounds earlier, but that was hours ago. I've had a shower since then. I can't still smell like sulfur. I have a date with Yamacha tomorrow, so I better smell amazing."

"Are you sure you weren't sprayed by a skunk?"

"Oh, you're just making this up," Bulma figured. With her nose in the air, she declared, "I smell like a bed of roses."

She opened up a packet of wasabi peas that she had chosen to be her snack as Vegeta moved on to different bait.

"Eating some more? You already look like a beached whale, you could use some training instead."

Bulma shanked him with her eyes. She already worked out multiple times per week in the Capsule Corp. gym, and was damn proud of toned yet curvy body. Just because her body didn't present like she had overdosed on steroids like his, that didn't mean that she resembled some blubbery marine animal. When she had told him to fight back, she hadn't quite been expecting this genre of invective. But leave it to a man, alien or not, to have no recourse other than maligning a woman's appearance. Sometimes this plan to spar with him rebounded onto her but in the end, she always found a way to best him, and this would be another one of those times.

"You're right Vegeta, I won't eat anything else tonight." Bulma threw her wasabi peas unceremoniously into the trash. She walked past the table in the direction of the door, but stopped in front of his chair. "But neither will you," she added vindictively.

"Huh?" Vegeta finally looked up and as he did, he saw Bulma dunk the entire jug of water that had been on the table, ice cubes included, onto his head. She had finally found something basic, or rather neutral, to christen her revenge.

He was soaked and his meal was now soggy and inedible. Vegeta didn't initially react, his mind had taken him to a place of bellicose sanctions, of just desserts, and he needed a moment to feed on it before he came back. How had she gotten past his defenses anyways? Why hadn't he realized what she was doing? He must have been too preoccupied with his food to notice her.

There was silence in the kitchen, but of the uncomfortable variety, where you know something sinister is lurking closeby just you can't see it, and that thing that was lurking was rage. Maybe I went too far this time, Bulma thought worriedly, before she scurried away. Once she had reached the stairs, she sprinted the rest of the way to her room. "Phew, I made it," she said, letting out a sigh of relief.

Suddenly, she felt a hand pull her feet from off the ground. Vegeta had caught up to her, and he was dragging her by the collar of her shirt from her room to the large second floor balcony. The way he was hauling her by the neck was cutting off her air supply.

"I'll kill you," he announced murderously, as his eyes like the prongs on a fork stabbed into her.

The playful games with him were over. Bulma wasn't sure if he was serious or not, but she had overcome her fear of him and she most definitely wasn't going to apologize. The latter would be worse than death.

Once they were on the balcony, Vegeta paused, looking like he himself didn't quite know what to do with her, and had to confer inwardly with his rage for guidance.

In that small space of time, Bulma patted the hair on top of his head and cast an ice cube entangled in it to the ground below. Vegeta's hair had gone from full, flourishing flames that spread up towards the sun to a coat of black soot heaping down his back. Bulma laughed. "Vegeta, I didn't know your hair got so nice and long when it's wet."

Vegeta stammered and looked utterly flummoxed, "I'll kill you," he stated again, this time less convincingly.

Bulma continued laughing and stroked his hair again. Her laugh ended prematurely though, as he tightened his hold around her throat, and lifted her over the balcony ledge. Bulma's eyes widened, but she didn't look frightened, it was just the same old anger and defiance. Her nails started ripping into his fingers in a vain attempt for him to release her.

It was his turn to laugh. "You want me to let you go?"

She glared at him, not sparing one glance for the cold hard cement awaiting her two stories below. Her feet dangled over the balcony and she tried to wrap her legs around the bars just beneath the rail. She was wriggling like a disgusting worm in his arms while he tried to shake the fear back into her. He wanted the idea of falling to terrify her, with it only made worse by her knowing that he'd do nothing to prevent her fall, but it never came. So he had to let that wish go and let her go too.

"Ok, here you go."

Vegeta hurled her towards the ground. Bulma didn't scream, instead she used her last seconds of life to curse Vegeta. She didn't come crashing to the earth like she thought she would, but landed with a big splash into the pool. Her head bobbed up from the water, as her arms thrashed around. The pool wasn't directly below the balcony, but was located further into the backyard. He had purposely aimed her there, when she had thought that she was going to die!

Her vision was suddenly partially blocked by strands of her hair. "What the...?" Her hands went to her head. Her perm was gone, her hair limply drooped down her face in its place. Bulma looked up to the balcony in the distance. Vegeta was regarding her coolly, with his arms crossed. With her hair in disarray and hanging over the surface of the pool like strings of seaweed, she looked exactly like the being she was, especially with that colouring of hers. She looked just like a sea wench.

His voice floated down in a rich baritone towards her, "You should be thanking me, the chlorine should wash that stench right off of you and you can get some exercise too while you're in there."

Bulma shook her fist up at him. "Vegeta, you're dead." Ruining her hair was akin to a declaration of war, and she had plenty more war games in mind.

Vegeta watched her struggle in her watered-logged clothes to make it to the pool ladder, it was like she was wading through pond scum. She looked back at him once more before he went back inside, and it was weird because the way she was looking at him was so serene and innocent, but if he looked deeper into her eyes, there was a sharp glint, and he knew a shark fin was on the horizon.


	2. Ennui

Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Ball, but I sure wish I did.

Hi! I'd like to offer a big thank you to everyone who took the time to read, follow, favourite and comment on this story, it is much appreciated ^_^. Apologies in advance for this chapter since there is a lot of Yamacha, but he is a necessary evil that has to be expunged before we can move on to the good stuff ;).

 **Chapter 2 - Ennui**

Bulma negatively inspected the line of closely spaced hedges that had somehow matured into an overgrown eyesore. Her mother and her army of bots were usually more diligent when it came to the general upkeep and maintenance of the grounds, so she wondered how they could have made such a glaring oversight when the rest of the gardens looked immaculate. The hedges had enlarged at the top, propagating disorderedly into a V shape that was the deciduous double of a man's torso, and that was also happening to shade its own lower branches. The shrubs had multiplied so densely that now even sunlight couldn't penetrate any of the interior growth, which had resulted in a massive buildup that was dead on the inside yet was still extending further outwards with each passing year.

The entire hedgerow was in desperate need of rejuvenation and with hand-held shears, Bulma was trying to return the populous plant to its former state of excellence. She clipped some branches at a 45-degree angle, thinning out spots of thick outer cover so that new bud production could be stimulated near the plant's edges. Next, she removed one third of the thickest stems from down the base of the shrub and excised the suckers, those small fine branches that distended from off of the trunk. The excess foliage fell away without a struggle as she trimmed across the top of the plant. The hedges were beginning to look neat and tidy again, with its inner limbs now exposed to the light and air it sorely needed to be able to thrive. As she continued moving down the hedges with conveyor belt efficiency, she trod on the growing mound of once glossy, dark green leaves and red berries whose bloom had turned brown, her feet crunching it all into mulch. Finally, the hedges were transformed, being simplified into a fresh base where new growth could originate.

Bulma put her shears down, pleased with her stubborn victory over nature, and glanced up, realizing that her gardening efforts had led her from one point of the backyard to another as she followed the straight line of the hedges. Right in front of her now was the back of Vegeta's head, as he sat at the long table that had been brought outside so her family, the Saiyan and her boyfriend could all dine al fresco. Her mother was as usual slaving away over the yakiniku grill so that her men wouldn't go hungry. Vegeta was digging into an overloaded plate of steaks that were still a little blue and had blood drizzling off them. He seemed completely oblivious to her presence behind him, and his unruly tangle of spikes called for her tender loving care in the same way the shrubs she had just painstakingly groomed had.

Bulma's fingers itched. She moved the handle of the shears so that the blades clicked sharply a few times. Why not give Vegeta a haircut? He had after all seen fit to play stylist with her hair. The mysterious man could use a new mystery makeover, she herself wouldn't even know how it would turn out. Bulma surreptitiously wielded the shears over Vegeta's head.

Vegeta could always sense an oncoming attack before the physical strike arrived. But for the second time with Bulma, he was unnerved by the fact that she had landed a strike on him without his radar detecting anything first. Why was that? Maybe her ki was just so laughably low that his internal alert system hadn't registered a threat. But as he was slowly coming to find out, that was a mistake. Bulma may not be able to physically harm him, but she could annoy him to the point of aneurysm, and that was definitely something he wanted to avoid. So when his hair had softly peppered across his face, he had thought that some loose strands were just being dislodged with the wind. But as an inordinate amount of hair collected in his lap, he finally perceived the rapid little deviations of the shears as Bulma seemed to be pruning his hair at random.

Vegeta sprung from his chair, and in one swift motion, he had swiped the shears from her hand. "What do you think you're doing?" he whispered, his voice seeping into her like a lethal dose of radiation.

Bulma was all doe-eyed and innocent, pretending not to grasp that she was frolicking in a danger zone. "I was just changing up your look. The interplanetary murderer and the primitive monkey look are so dépassé, Vegeta."

He felt his anger start to simmer in his chest, his look that could inspire fear throughout the universe would always be au courant and would never go out of style. Vegeta's hand felt around the back of his head, patting discontentedly at his shaven down spikes like a cranky rhinoceros poached of its horn. "Is that what you call butchering the back of my head? A new look? You know that attacking my hair won't kill me? My hair's already dead."

"This isn't about killing you, it's much graver than that. I just couldn't let you desecrate my hair and get away with it."

"What are you raving about?"

"When you threw me into the pool, my perm was ruined, it took 5 hours to fix."

"That's what spurs you to arms? Hair?"

"You got that right. Now don't fuss Vegeta or I'll end up giving you a terrible haircut like a mullet." Bulma reached for the shears, pulling on them with all her might but they didn't budge from Vegeta's hold.

He snarled at her in a vicious animal tenor that a human voice couldn't reproduce.

"Oh, so sassy," Bulma said unfazed, "I'm going to give you a pop idol hair cut, you'd look great with bangs."

Vegeta yanked roughly on the shears, taking them out of Bulma's reach. "How about I scalp you instead? No more long tresses. You'll be balder than that chibi friend of yours. Let's get started." He widened the shears, snapping them open and shut like an alligator's jaws. "Time for a new look," he mocked. "Now don't move, you wouldn't want it to turn out uneven, or for me to accidentally, or maybe purposely cut off your head instead."

"Get away from me, monkey," Bulma warned, a little worried. Vegeta wouldn't actually cut off all her hair, would he? It'd be so rude to do something like that to a woman, particularly her, who had to keep up with appearances.

As Bulma and Vegeta's argument threatened to boil over into a full-blown brawl, Yamacha had just been staring at them dumbfounded while he ate. It wasn't unusual to see Bulma upbraid anyone who had the misfortune to stoke her ire or who even just crossed paths with her on the wrong day. He had been on the receiving end of her firestorm more times than he could count, where she could reduce him into being just some abject weakling even though he was one of the strongest fighters on Earth. He just couldn't seem to muster up the required strength for a fight when it came to her. So the high-pitched screaming that was directed towards the no-good psychopath she had chosen to house, and the incessant complaints against him that piled up like hate mail, were just newfangled threads that fit seamlessly into the chaotic tapestry of life at Capsule Corp.

But something was different now in her interactions with the alien fiend, and it had nothing to do with Bulma but everything to do with Vegeta. Vegeta was a man of fists not words and Bulma's words had frequently written him into a chapter of untold rage that was displayed openly on his face for all to read. His responses to her had previously only been in caveman grunts that were spit out in lieu of words. Yamacha believed that it was only a matter of time before he responded with violence. All men had their breaking point and Bulma liked to antagonize things to that point, she just couldn't resist poking a sleeping beast in the eye. Why Vegeta hadn't reacted violently so far, Yamacha had a vague guess that it had something to do with the gravity ship and that he'd be willing to take some verbal abuse in exchange for the key to the Super Saiyan kingdom, that same hypergravity that Goku had used. But that had changed, sometime during his two years on Earth, his speech patterns had diversified and he had learned to keep his fists to himself…for the most part.

Yamacha had been absolutely astonished when he had discovered that Vegeta had become a much more active participant in Bulma's usually one-sided sniping. He hadn't been privy to the events that had begot this change, but it definitely had to have been something drastic. Vegeta must have reached a different sort of breaking point, perhaps Bulma's heckling had fried the neural networks in his brain. Whatever had happened though, he didn't like it. He wouldn't have appreciated anyone becoming better acquainted with his girlfriend, but it was especially upsetting when that person was his own killer. From his observations, Bulma had lowered her defenses against him and Vegeta had slightly done the same with her, while Yamacha was just raising his guard higher and higher against them.

He continued to watch their mêlée over the shears while he chewed the steak in his mouth to mush in the same way a cow chews at cud. He heard the insults fire between them that snapped, crackled and popped like little fireworks being set off that accompanied the sound of the meat bubbling on the yakiniku grill. Bulma bumped into the table, knocking over the dishes, as she prevented her cauliflowered head from being speared by the shears.

A little thought that was as maniacal as it was obvious struck him, it would be considered abusive and extreme by anyone else's standards, but were they flirting with each other? Bulma had always been flirtatious, but besides him, no one had ever reciprocated it before. Yamacha's mouth was full yet felt incredibly empty, all he could taste was the bitterness of these new ideas. He would put a stop to their unholy racket. And furthermore, he didn't want to risk Vegeta making his girlfriend's head as hairless as a baby bird's; no, he only liked the bald eagle look in one spot and it wasn't on her head. But before he could swallow and give them a mouthful, and to tell them to cut it out already, Bulma's mother interrupted.

"Bulma-chan, you shouldn't fight with your boyfriend in front of guests," Panchy scolded.

Bulma immediately let go of the shears with which she had been playing tug of war with Vegeta. She looked away from Vegeta and towards her mother, her eyes bugging in alarm as she let out an indignant snort. "Umm, Mama, Yamacha is my boyfriend," her hands flapping towards her boyfriend whose mouth was hanging open, with the chewed-up food visible for all to see. Bulma then pointed her finger vigorously, like a stab at the other man. "This is Vegeta, alien guy who is not my boyfriend, remember?"

Panchy's eyes opened a tad, as she squinted dumbly at the two very appalled men in front of her. "Oh yes, of course," she twittered, "but honey, it just gets so confusing when there are so many handsome men around the house. You can't blame me for thinking like I do when you and Vegeta are always at it like rabbits."

At that Freudian slip, Yamacha involuntarily swallowed, but the food went down the wrong tube, so he ended up choking on a piece of broccoli. He was choking not even on meat but a vegetable.

Panchy placed the barbecue tongs across her chest as she thought it over again. "Or does the expression go, at it like cats and dogs? I always get those two mixed up," she giggled. "Now you all enjoy your meal," she used the tongs to signal to the table, summoning them to come sit down and eat, "and you boys learn to get along, Bulma can only date one of you."

Vegeta dropped the shears to the ground, his hairdressing aspirations completely abandoned. He was still not well-versed in Earth colloquialisms, but even with his partial knowledge, he could understand that some sexual allusion had been made between him and the onna. How ridiculous and embarrassing it all was. Bulma's mother truly lived on the other side of the tracks parallel to sanity if she could offhandedly say something like that. At least Bulma looked as uncomfortable as he did at that declaration, as they both sat down at the table sheepishly.

"For Kami's sake, mother," Bulma said in an exasperated tone that her mother frequently forced her to dust off, "I'm only dating Yamacha, the same guy that I've been dating for the past 14 years."

"Well that's good to hear Bulma-chan, you know I taught you better than to date multiple suitors at once. I won't have any daughter of mine becoming some sort of polygamist. Imagine what the neighbours would say, not to mention the tabloids…"

Bulma groaned and covered her ears. Her mother was simply incorrigible.

As they all ate dinner in sulky silence, Yamacha looked from Bulma to Vegeta, who were avoiding each other's gaze even more so than was normal. Yamacha couldn't detect any hatred for the other in either of their eyes, what he saw instead was the same shared look that was more like a chaser to some drunken escapade. And in Yamacha's mind, now the seeds of doubt were planted.

...

Over the past few weeks, Yamacha had tried to limit the possible interactions between Bulma and Vegeta, by taking Bulma on dates far away from Capsule Corp. and by convincing her to sleep over at his apartment with increasing regularity. Although Vegeta was the invisible man for the most part, he unfailingly showed up for each and every meal. It wasn't like Yamacha could just ban Bulma from entering the kitchen whenever Vegeta was there. Kami help him, would she ever take that the wrong way, thinking that he was trying to imply she was fat. In fact, she had been rather sensitive about her weight lately, but that couldn't have had anything to do with him, he knew that topic was taboo. So dinner time was inevitably when the two would be brought together, and he used that time to watch them as closely as a mother hen watches over her eggs. And sometimes it was good to have the two guilty parties in the same vicinity to test whether any of his suspicions bore any fruit. That was the situation he presently found himself in, so he'd make the most of it performing surveillance.

Bulma was preparing karubi for their dinner on the patio outside while Yamacha and Vegeta waited on the lawn furniture surrounding her. Every now and again, Vegeta would pound his fist into the white plastic table as a wordless prompt to get Bulma to hurry up and feed him, while she swore at him under her breath. Everything so far had been fairly inoffensive between them, until something small but disturbing happened, that was only made all the more disturbing because Yamacha believed that he was the only one to have noticed it, and that it was unknown to the actual players involved.

It was a rather chilly evening for the normally warm West City, but despite the crispness of the air, Bulma's skin hadn't broken into gooseflesh. The goosebumps had only started to dot her skin when her fingers blink-and-you'll-miss-it quick, brushed against Vegeta's as she passed a whole platter of braised short ribs to him. Yamacha saw her rub her pimpled arms and finally saw her rub her hands over the heat of the grill, trying to warm them. Bulma's skin had been impervious to the cold weather, but just one miniscule touch from Vegeta had sent her running for warmer climes. The ice queen, the head bitch of science, could actually feel a frisson right under her skin, and it was Vegeta, not him, that was chilling her from hot to cold, like your warm breath rising in an icy mist under arctic temperatures. Bulma's mind may not have known it, but her body could tell no lies. She was affected by him.

"Bulma, I think we should go inside."

"Huh?" Bulma looked surprised, looking back at him from the grill. "I haven't made your portion yet. Don't you want any?"

"No, I'm not hungry." He waited for her to turn off the grill, before he led her away by her hand, and under his hand's insistence, her goosebumps gave way to flesh that was as slippery as fish gills, and that was becoming harder and harder to maintain a hold on.

Yamacha glanced at Vegeta, and was shocked to see that for once Vegeta was looking right back at him. Vegeta never directly looked at him, perhaps because Vegeta thought he was still nobility and that Yamacha was just some lowly peon that was beneath his notice. But over a mountain of meat, Vegeta's eyes met his, heavy with cruel understanding or his regular taunting, Yamacha couldn't tell which.

Vegeta growled and then bit off a large chunk of meat that left only the yellowed bone behind. His eyes traveled from Yamacha to Bulma's backside, her curves being illustrated by the tightness of her bandage dress.

Yamacha's hands shielded her from view and he butted her back inside the door, while Bulma yelled at him to treat a lady like her gently.

Vegeta only laughed.

Puar had watched this strange exchange where his master had refused them both dinner. He still wanted to eat, but while looking back and forth from Yamacha to Vegeta, he twirled in after Yamacha, being less hungry than he was scared of Vegeta and his sonorous laugh.

How had it happened? Bulma asked herself. What was the source of this growing malaise that tainted everything it touched? When had she come to loathe the one she loved and his lack of ambition, his abounding immaturity, his wandering eye, his brash, quick and uninspired lovemaking, his oversimplifications and inability to have a deep, meaningful and intelligent conversation?

She had noticed the beginnings of rot after Yamacha had come back from death completely unchanged, with no rouse to action, just with the same complacency as before, even though his next death was already preordained with the arrival of the androids. But the origins of her contempt must have started years earlier in gestures that she should have found endearing. A large part of it must have been in the way he clung to her, like a child to its mother, making her the only real jewel in the zirconia of his life and making the wooing of her his life's greatest achievement.

But more than that, she knew everything about him and could predict his every move with no mystery. As a scientist, she was drawn to the mysteries of nature that presented as a bottomless well. Whereas, with Yamacha, his nature was barren and had been deforested of all enigmas. His thoughts and ambitions were weak little saplings that she could rip out at will using just the wind power of her voice. From the hidden canopy of her innermost thoughts, she could only see his dead wood.

And fittingly then, like an addendum to her mental analysis, she felt him wilt inside her.

Yamacha pulled out, muttered some apology and an excuse as to why this kept happening so often. He then began stroking himself to try to relight the fire, while looking hopefully to Bulma, so that maybe she would take it upon herself to water him back up with her mouth.

But Bulma had nothing to water him with, the thirst, the moisture had all dried up. She couldn't even remember how long this unsatisfying sexual drought had lasted between them. All she knew was that the lust that had once been in constant bloom between her legs had dried into a desert.

But forget about her sex deprivation for a second, Yamacha couldn't even maintain an erection with her nowadays. In the past, that would have triggered a lot of anxiety for her but now she was just relieved, it meant that sex between them didn't last for very long. She should have been more concerned though, this was about her boyfriend's health, and maybe Yamacha had erectile dysfunction that was just going undiagnosed. Kami, maybe she needed to get him a senzu bean or some other stimulant it keep it up. But with Vegeta it wouldn't take some magic beans to get a beanstalk to grow...

Her body bucked up in surprise, in the same way it would have responded to a man's teasing hand. Now why had her mind wandered to Vegeta in the most intimate of moments? She assumed it was because she was bored in her relationship and that he was the only other man in her age bracket that was around to compare with Yamacha. It wasn't because she felt any attraction towards the little hobgoblin. No fucking way! The real reason though must have been because he was exciting. She knew next to nothing about him, but she was now trapped in his labyrinth, having previously entered it through their war games, not being able to exit until she explored every thorny crevice and every dead end that opened to new possibilities within him.

Vegeta was an unknown, an x-factor she had to solve for, while Yamacha was a given, a proof she had solved long ago. Vegeta drove her crazy, but it was exciting, it was passion, it was feeling, it was something, unlike this heat death of a relationship.

Yamacha reached for her body to try to make love to her again, and Bulma just wanted to shudder at his touch, that touch that was just a baby's blanket of comfort and familiarity. But what about with Vegeta? How would he touch her? He had already done it before with violence. She already knew that his touch was abrading lace and leather, the clip of a bullwhip…she stopped herself from going any further.

She felt something warm in the pit of her stomach that scratched at her insides as it made its way downwards. What was this feeling again? It wasn't altogether unpleasant, but it seemed deceitful, false and not something she wanted to share with Yamacha.

Bulma pulled away from Yamacha. His arms chopped away from hers as easily as twigs, his fingers like thick and stubby potato tubers unstuck from hers and his gangly legs like pistils and stamens were plucked away from hers. She shook every bit of him off her, and Yamacha's arousal similarly raked back into himself.

"You don't want to do it?" Yamacha asked sadly.

"I'm no longer in the mood," Bulma explained shortly, finally feeling that warm feeling melt away too. No, she certainly didn't want anymore of whatever he was trying to give her, but Yamacha still had his uses. This waste, this manure between them, was indubitably fertilizing something new between her and Vegeta - a voracious thrill.

It shouldn't have been like this; she wouldn't have found any of this to be nearly as exciting if Yamacha just wasn't so boring. Now how had she become so heartless? This was her boyfriend, her lover, her partner in crime, or had Vegeta replaced the last part?

She loved him. Oh love, it was such a fickle thing except when it wasn't, like in her case. Hers and Yamacha's love had stretched thin throughout the years. Their love was a soil once rich that was suffering from demineralization and a loss of nutrients. She loved him, but could she subsist on this tasteless gruel of love any longer? She loved him, but she loved excitement, she loved herself more. She loved him so what could she do? She loved him so she'd just have to hope for spring. Until then she had her ennui to keep her warm and unfeeling.

And just for a moment, instead of loving herself, she hated herself. This was emotional cheating, it was wrong, Yamacha didn't deserve this. But how could she stop the sprinkler of her thoughts that were hosing down Yamacha but were still gentle enough to let ideas of Vegeta grow?

Yamacha lay on Bulma's bed, worry and a devastating sense of loss had catapulted him into dizziness. His touch that was so full of love had only earned a feeble suppression of a yawn from her. He could tell that Bulma was just barely abiding his bumbling caresses, but even she had her limits. His pride had been decimated when he saw her reach for the lube, so that she could oil herself up into an artificial wetness that he himself could no longer provide. And when her eyes had closed to him, opening instead to her own private fantasy, Yamacha wondered if it had involved _him_.

This contagion of paranoia that nibbled on his trust and sanity more and more each day, might not just be a fictitious illness like Munchausen's, it might just be real, which would mean their relationship was beyond recovery. But he couldn't just let her ghost him like this without trying every alternative treatment, every quack cure to save what they had, could he? Yet he couldn't even think of one thing he should try. Bulma had always been the one to repair the holes in their relationship, or she'd at least had the good sense to tell him what to do to make it all better. Everything might be fine though; he might just be imagining it all…

"Why do you like him, Bulma?" he suddenly asked, trying to sound calm when so much relied on her answer.

"Like who?"

"Vegeta," he said reproachfully, as if it were the most reviled word in the universal tongue.

"I wouldn't say I like him. He's not a man that anyone could really like. But it's nice to know that he won't kill me, I don't think many people alive can lay claim to that. So that's one thing to like."

"How could you possibly know that?" Yamacha demanded skeptically, lifting his head from the bed to face her.

"Oh, I know he won't kill me, of that I am certain," Bulma said, raising her eyebrows knowingly like she was keeping classified information from him.

Her doubts might be non-existent but his doubts rose again like vomit funneling up his throat that he could only just contain. "I don't see how you could think that of him, no one here is off-limits to him," Yamacha said bitterly, referring not only to death but to conquest as well.

"Because I'm still here, aren't I? Despite everything I've done and will do to make his life a living hell. You've just got to let him think he's in charge when you're really the mastermind behind everything." Bulma was curled feline-like in an armchair and the wintry gloom of the room was lit only by her cigarette, as she pondered in smoke rings that greyed to dusk.

"You don't know him," Yamacha said with a harshness that could break childhood dreams.

"And neither do you. But maybe that's the problem, maybe if we did know him, he wouldn't be so bad." Bulma took another reflective drag of her cigarette. "He is rather dedicated though, I've got to admire that. Why don't you train like that?"

There she goes, Yamacha bemoaned, singeing me with a million little burns, as carelessly as she taps the ash from her cigarette. It's not the first time and it won't be the last, and she doesn't even realize she's doing it, making this tacit comparison between me and him. "I'm not psychotic, that's why."

"Sorry," Bulma said quickly, although a real apology was the furthest thing from her tone, instead it sounded closer to ridicule. "I know you're trying your _best_. But you guys were the ones who decided that you just had to fight the androids instead of taking my advice and nipping it in the bud. Just please don't go and die again. I would be so very _hurt_ if that were to happen," yet Bulma couldn't have sounded more removed.

Yamacha's head hit the bedpost, which made a dull thud, as he tried to block all of his senses from every hateful word she uttered that she falsely tried to dress up with concern.

The embers of his pride had turned to dust, and Bulma would never know it, not when she was busy lighting up someone new. Yamacha's manhood was like putty in her hands. And even Vegeta had a piece of him, where every day he made him feel like less of a man; whereas, in his masculine superiority he could make Bulma feel as bashful and as flustered as a schoolgirl. Yamacha never had that effect on her, not ever in all the time they had been lovers.

But what did Vegeta have to gain from her? Yamacha surmised that Vegeta must covet what was his, only because it was his and he saw it as something that was simply his for the taking. He couldn't really be interested in Bulma, that had to be beyond his capabilities.

Bulma likened herself to a mastermind when it came to dealing with Vegeta, but it had always been the Saiyan prince who had occupied that position. It was said that he was a brilliant tactician. After all, how else could he have survived all those years in Freeza's employ? Bulma would be burned by him and Yamacha was already toast.

He knew all this, his mind was convinced that it was the truth and not a conspiracy theory, yet inertia still weighed him down and he was powerless to reverse it.

'No, I can't let it end like this!'

He jumped from the bed, as if struck by an electric shock, "I've gotta go," Yamacha said, pulling his arms through his shirt. "I'm going to go train in the desert tomorrow. You're right Bulma, I do need to step up my training."

Bulma let her cigarette smoulder in the ashtray, "Take care, Yamacha," she murmured, with her eyes never leaving her cloud of smoke.

When Yamacha left, Bulma remained seated in her plush armchair, picking at the chenille, while she contemplated her entire relationship with Yamacha from lighthearted teens to indifferent adults. The most enduring image she had of Yamacha, that was stamped permanently in her mind, was his lopsided grin that barely showed his teeth, exhibiting shyness rather than menace, and his eyes that hung slipshod on his face as two empty lockets that were the keeper of no secrets or enticements.

This is how it feels when the passion is dead, Bulma concluded like a death sentence. How could she enliven their passion, and more importantly, did she even want to?

Bulma touched the heart-shaped locket that was as irritating as a noose around her neck. Yamacha had given it to her years before for her birthday and she had worn it regularly ever since. But now Bulma wanted to replace it with something else, maybe with a necklace of black opals?

Bulma finally got up, stretching her limbs and her locket slid into her open palm. It had taken just a few absent tugs from her fingers to detach it. As Bulma inspected the broken clasp, she decided that it was about time the trinket broke. She could easily fix it but somehow she didn't have the will.

The locket had opened on its own, and the picture of her and Yamacha enclosed within, teenage and in love, had fluttered somewhere to the floor. Her furry rug had tall fibres, so she couldn't immediately locate the photo anywhere. She also wasn't willing to search for it on hand and knee. Just let it be, I'll find it eventually or the cleaning bots will, she thought lazily. But that gift was from Yamacha, it was a symbol of his undying love, she couldn't just let it get buried within her carpet and eventually trampled on by careless feet. She grumbled as she bent to her knees, and groped blindly at the ground. She needed to relearn how to miss him, how to be attracted to him, not only to love him, so maybe some time apart was exactly what the doctor ordered.

Bulma wearily straightened herself back up, having finally retrieved the necklace. She turned the locket over in her hands, clinically appraising its value. The gold was so thin and brittle in her hands. Did this ever used to sparkle? she asked herself. She couldn't recall, but maybe the gold had always just been rusty tin.

She walked over to her vanity and filed the locket far away in a jewellery box of rosewood. The wood itself was so worn and old, and the latch on the box could also no longer close. It was another relic of her adolescence that had been carried thoughtlessly into her adulthood, when it should have been discarded long ago. She swept her hand across her bare neck while looking at herself in the vanity mirror. Her neck seemed smaller and deformed with nothing there to decorate it.

Despite having stated his training intentions to Bulma, Yamacha hadn't withdrawn from Capsule Corp. property. He was still there hours later, skipping rocks across the pond in the garden.

After a long wait, when he knew that everyone was asleep, even Vegeta, he turned to his faithful companion. "Puar, it's time," he said.

"Are we going to the desert now, Yamacha-sama?" his loyal cat inquired, struggling to keep up with his brisk pace.

"Not yet, I'm just going to try this first," he said pointing towards the gravity chamber that loomed ominously ahead of them.

"Are you sure?" Puar squeaked.

"Yes. Anything Vegeta can do, I can do," he proclaimed, his body finally ready to take a stand and to fight for the woman he loved.

While Yamacha attempted to train like Vegeta, Bulma had a dream that was both like a nightmare and a prophecy combined into one. She was clutching Pandora's box beside a bottomless well. It was up to her to decide whether she would throw the box into its fathomless depths or open it and bring a pestilence onto the world. The logical response was to dispose of it so that it could never wreak havoc. But something made her hesitate.

The box had its own dark charm. It was carved of onyx, that was just too sleek and beautiful to destroy. And just because you are warned about something, that doesn't automatically make it dangerous. What's secret can only be speculated upon until it lets itself be known. What if Pandora's box held some secret joy? Wouldn't she then be committing a disservice to the world to not release it?

All of a sudden, the box almost plunged into the deep on its own, for it began to rattle and hum, demanding to be opened, while jerking up and down in her hands. Bulma reaffirmed her hold on the box, and fingered the lock that was hot to the touch. Remember, her own voice whispered through her head light and mysterious, you have your own veritable Pandora's box that's rattling for you to open it.

"Vegeta," Bulma gasped in realization, her hand rushing to her voice box, brushing against the locket around her neck. His name rang out so sweetly and so terribly in that dreamscape. And then she understood what the box contained.

A heart! A heart that's rattling to be freed. A heart that's shrunken and diseased and that would not heal unless she allowed it. All at once, she had decided. She was going to open the box, "And may Kami help me," she prayed.

The water in the bottomless well began to gurgle and churn and rise in jets to the surface. It wanted its payment and it wanted it now. And Bulma also realized that it was no ordinary well but a wishing well, and a wish would be hers if she gifted it a token. There was no question about it, she ripped the necklace from her neck and threw it as far down the well as she was able. The waters quietened, accepting her token, until all she could see was the same opaque blackness as before.

"I wish for Vegeta's salvation," she cried, "for all of our salvation!"

Bulma woke up, feeling like she was tumbling through the air without a parachute. "What a strange dream," she breathed. She looked to her left, insanely expecting to see Vegeta in bed beside her, but she was alone, not even Yamacha was there.

The following morning Bulma awoke to the always delightful sounds of His Royal Pain in the Ass shouting and threatening. Bulma was about to close her eyes and fall back into a deep sleep, which was always how the nouveau riche like her should respond to an entitled ancien régime prick like him, but then she realized that he was wasn't yelling at her but at Yamacha instead. But why? What did they have to fight about?

Once Yamacha had returned from the dead and Vegeta had returned from space, there had been some minor altercations between the two of them, that Bulma had to diplomatically squash. But it hadn't taken Yamacha long to learn that if he wanted to stay alive, it was best that he not engage with Vegeta in any way, similar to how he avoided her when she was in one of her bad moods. There had been an unstable truce at Capsule Corp, and she saw no reason why it had to be annulled now.

No longer asleep, but more curious and feeling the beginnings of anger start to heat at her chest instead, Bulma climbed out of bed and pulled on her leopard print robe. Bulma made it downstairs and through the large picture window that looked out onto the backyard, she saw Yamacha and Vegeta with their chests hitting off each other's, looking like some cocksure…well, cocks, trying to assert their male dominance.

She could hear Vegeta, his voice was now low and controlled, which meant he had entered a higher level of rage and that Yamacha had better watch out, as he said, "Don't deny it, Earthling, I know you put your dirty hands on what's mine. I can sense, I can smell what you did."

And Yamacha, instead of walking away and being the bigger man, goaded Vegeta instead, "So what if I did? Nothing here belongs to you. You possess nothing and you are nothing."

Vegeta grabbed the front of Yamacha's dogi, and finally there was a smudge of fear in Yamacha's eyes at the dire predicament that he had gotten himself into.

"If I am nothing, then what does that make you? I must be something in a class above you if I can blast you into nothingness."

Kami give her strength. Bulma sighed, Yamacha was going to get himself killed. Bulma barrelled over to them, her anger now as hot as the Earth's core, as she put a steadying, reprimanding hand over Vegeta's, who was positioning a blue flame of ki over Yamacha's head.

"What the fuck are you two doing?" she shrieked. "If you two idiots want to beat each other up, then do it far away from my house. And Yamacha," Bulma scolded, "I thought you knew better than to try to provoke Vegeta. He doesn't have any decency unlike the rest of us."

The cobalt ki flowed back into Vegeta's body and he let Yamacha go like he was a sack of rotting garbage. "That is correct," Vegeta affirmed, turning himself towards Bulma, with his teeth glittering at her like very white and very sharp sabres. "I don't have a decent bone in my body."

Bulma crossed her arms and managed to look down on Vegeta, even though they were both equally tall. "And you Vegeta, don't you have anything better to do? You're like a broken record with your I must constantly train jabber, so why aren't you doing it?" Bulma saw that she was rattling the sabre-toothed Saiyan, which was exactly what she had to do to deflect attention away from her poor outmatched boyfriend.

Vegeta growled at her, "I was, until this weakling dared to pollute my gravity chamber with his pathetic attempts at training. He should know his limits, they have been met; whereas, I am only just beginning to test mine. I bet he didn't even last a minute in there."

Yamacha perked up again, ready to add in his denial, but Bulma was quicker. "Yamacha is this true?"

Yamacha nodded sullenly at her.

"Are you insane? You're human remember? Human anatomy can't endure ultra gravitation without severe side effects. You're lucky to be alive."

"Hahaha," Vegeta laughed with cruel amusement, "how does it feel to have your own woman agree with me and to have no faith in you?"

Bulma turned back towards him, ready to tear him apart as well. "Don't be so smug Vegeta. Frankly, I don't know why you haven't keeled over yet either. You're looking more battered with each passing day."

For a brief second, Vegeta looked over his body, momentarily questioning if what she said was true. Nope, she was completely wrong in her criticisms, as usual. "I'm a Saiyan, exercising my body to its maximum limit only makes me stronger. You're just a carping vermin woman. Now go away," he said stepping away from her and back towards Yamacha, "there's nothing Saiyans hate more than having a fight disrupted. I intend to give weakling here a beating."

Bulma had made a valiant attempt to distract Vegeta, but he had never lost sight of his victim. Vegeta punched Yamacha right in the face before either of them could register what was happening. Yamacha put a hand to his eye in shock, while Vegeta raised his fist for the next assault. But before he could continue, Bulma sandwiched herself in between the two men.

"Yamacha, are you ok?" she asked, peering over at her boyfriend. "Yikes, you're going to have one serious black eye."

"Let me fight him Bulma," Yamacha demanded, his voice shaking, as he prepared his wolf fang fist.

"Listen to your lover Bulma," Vegeta counseled from right behind her.

"No," Bulma refused, putting one arm on each of the fight mongering men, and pushing them apart. "You two are just barbarians and you, Vegeta," she said, giving him a hard shove, "are the most barbaric of all."

"You flatter me Bulma," Vegeta replied, coming closer once again.

"Sucker punching Yamacha, that's just weak," she gibed, as she pushed Vegeta away again.

"Weak?" Vegeta was on her in an instant and covered her mouth with his gloved hand. "Onna, you talk way too much. Maybe you should learn to think before you speak."

Yamacha audibly gasped. What was Bulma doing? How in the hell was he going to help her get out of this? "Let her go Vegeta", Yamacha said gallantly, "she's not a part of this."

"But she just had to interfere and make it her business. She can fight her way out of this...but she better hurry." Vegeta stretched his hand out, so that his glove now covered her nose and not only her mouth. "I didn't leave her with too much air."

Yamacha was at a loss. Despite being prepared a moment ago to attack Vegeta, his courage had disappeared, replaced once more with the indisputable knowledge that he wasn't strong enough to hurt Vegeta and if he tried, he risked injuring Bulma in the process. However, he had to try, but Bulma struck first.

Bulma's teeth were like gnashed pearls that were ferociously gnawing Vegeta's gloves until she had penetrated through the fabric and was biting down on his fingers.

Vegeta lowered his hand and removed his glove. He inspected his fingers and was mildly impressed when he saw the one drop of blood trickle down his middle finger. "Well, look at that. The bitch has some bite to her bark. She's got more courage than you weakling. How's it feel to be trumped by this superficial girl?"

"What'd you just call me?" Bulma spat while catching her breath.

Vegeta put his hand to her throat, wiping his blood across her bare neck. "I've called you many things, and none of them have been flattering."

"I'm not letting you treat me like that." Bulma readied her hand to slap him, but Vegeta gently slapped her hand away instead, and her hand lolled uselessly back to her side.

"Now you wouldn't want to damage those hands of yours. I need those hands to build me training equipment and you might want to use them to patch up your lover's wounds. It's going to take more than bandages to fix his pride though."

"You jerk, you think I'm going to build you anything after this?"

Vegeta aimed a small ball of ki at her toolshed and it immediately burst into flames. "You will because you know that your life depends on it." He smirked devilishly at her. "But more than that, you will because you want to."

He threw his gloves into her hands, and Bulma was surprised that she caught them instead of letting them fall to the ground.

"How about you start by making me more durable gloves? Some rabid animal chewed right through these."

"You'd better learn not to bite the hand that feeds you," Bulma cautioned.

Vegeta looked down at his outstretched hands. "Why should I when these are the hands that will rule the Earth and the universe?"

Bulma let out a growl that paired nicely with his. "Why don't you go to hell, Vegeta?"

"I'll see you there, Bulma."

At this point, Yamacha had truly been forgotten by both Bulma and Vegeta as they pursued their vicious banter. And as they continued, he accrued more evidence for his paranoia. Yamacha saw that they really resembled each other now in both manner and bearing. They were demons of yin and yang, where each vengeful gesture would drum and echo between them, such as a twitch in one of their veins that would mirror moments afterward in the rancorous curl of the other's lips. It was just a month ago when Yamacha had believed that they were like oil and water, being completely insoluble with each other, but upon further testing, maybe they were miscible in any quantity, like nitroglycerin and…Ok, Yamacha didn't know. He wasn't a scientist, but he recognized chemistry when he saw it, and theirs was explosive.

The door to the gravity chamber slammed shut with a loud bang, meaning that Vegeta had finally gone to train, his argument with Bulma being over for now. Yamacha went up to Bulma, putting his hand around her slender waist, but he instantly released his arm, since somehow her body offered him no comfort and felt just like a snake's. "I'm leaving now, for real this time."

"Right now?" Bulma questioned startled. "Are you sure you're ok? Don't you want to lie down for a bit first? How about I get you some ice for that eye?"

I don't need ice, Yamacha thought bitterly, you've made me cold enough as it is. He had wanted to be her knight in shining armour, but she had just gravitated to that dark knight in ragged armour instead. "No, I'll be fine, I just need to get away from here for awhile."

"Alright," Bulma said, still with some surprise, but Yamacha detected, with no sadness at his departure.

As he flew away from Capsule Corp., all he felt was crushing defeat that would bury him regardless of his efforts, because he was now brutally aware of his own limitations in strength and in romance.

...

A month had passed and Yamacha had returned from his sojourn in the desert. When he had called to inform her that he was back, Bulma had sounded near ecstatic over the phone, with a gushing enthusiasm that she hadn't showered on him in living memory. She had invited him over to her house straightaway for tea and dessert which was to be followed by dinner and drinks.

At her insistence on seeing him, he had felt vindicated. It must be true what they say, absence really does make the heart grow fonder. Although he had been tormented day in and day out by his overactive imagination fabricating possible scenarios of the advancements and peccadilloes that might have occurred between Bulma and Vegeta, his absence had served its purpose. Bulma missed him, she missed having a real man around who would treat her like the queen she was instead of some foul washerwoman. She had to remember what he was all about, and what made him so attractive. Having no breaks from the annoyances of the prince of all paupers must have torn away whatever iron curtain had been separating them. She had to desire him again and want him in every form, and he was going to work her body so magnificently that she would forget everything about that lousy Saiyan. So when Yamacha and Puar traveled to Capsule Corp, there was a sprightly jig in his step as he flew.

Bulma met him on the lawn, the quick embrace and the mumbled greeting was a lot more subdued than he would have expected based on their earlier conversation. But maybe she wasn't behaving differently, maybe it was him that was remembering things differently. Maybe Yamacha had been so deprived of female company and the soft lilt of Bulma's voice that he was according a bubbliness to her speech when it had actually been a lot more tepid.

Bulma looked at him side-eyed in confusion, "Yamacha, why were you flying like that? Do you have restless leg syndrome from all that time in the desert?"

They hadn't even been reunited for one minute and she was already making him feel like a total idiot. "I was just happy to see you, maybe I got a bit carried away in showing it."

"You always make me laugh Yamacha, I've missed that. I wouldn't say no to seeing more of your aerial can-can, just you need to practice some more first."

So the queen only missed the antics of her court jester, not the man behind the jokes? Yamacha was reminded of those sad paintings of crying clowns. He shouldn't have dared hope for anything more from her, hope was making him its little bitch. Yamacha looked his girlfriend over. Nothing had changed with her, from her storm cloud hair to her tight flashy dresses, except for one small yet significant thing. "Where's your necklace?" he asked.

Bulma's hands flew guiltily to her neck. Usually when something has been worn for a long time there are indents left from its weight that takes a while to heal. Not this time. Her neck was free and unmarked like nothing had ever adorned it. "It broke," she said with a slight panic. Not wanting to dwell on this subject, Bulma linked arms with Yamacha and led him to the house. "Come on, let's get you some food. I bet you've only been eating cacti and coyote for the past month."

Bulma and Yamacha were in the living room enjoying some baked goods that Panchy had bought from her daily trip to the pâtisserie, and slowly but surely, the awkwardness between them was ironing out into the relaxed understanding that should be present among long-time lovers.

However, neither of them knew that their relationship was about to enter a nuclear winter, when the uninterrupted blue of the sky started billowing with black acrid smoke. This was followed soon after by an explosion that rocked the house with the force of an earthquake. It would take some sort of natural or manmade disaster to infringe on his cozy rendezvous with Bulma, and Yamacha knew exactly who had such a flair for the dramatic despite vowing that he was a solitary warrior. Yamacha looked to his girlfriend, but her chair was empty, having made all the connections long before the wheels of discord had begun spinning in his head.

Upon seeing the black smoke curl up towards heaven, Bulma had immediately looked out into the backyard towards capsule 3, but she hadn't recognized what she saw. The spindly support legs of the ship had snapped in half and its spherical body had collapsed to the ground with hairline fractures all down the sides like a cracked egg. There was a crater in the middle of the lawn that was surrounded by torched grass and small flames were whipping across the green until dying on the asphalt walkway. "Oh my god, Vegeta," Bulma cried. Without taking a moment to assess the situation and to consider that she was going to enter a hazardous area, Bulma had leapt up from her chair, raced down the stairs and skittered across the lawn, jumping over the charred remains of the chamber so that she could make it to Vegeta.

After recovering from the initial curveball that Bulma had zipped away from him without him realizing it, Yamacha yelled down to her, "Bulma, don't go down there, it's dangerous." She was being so lax about her own safety…when she usually was so gung-ho about it when it came to accidents like these. "Why don't you wait for the cleanup crew and an emergency squad to rescue him?" When Bulma didn't acknowledge him, or perhaps she hadn't even heard him, Yamacha sighed profoundly and wiped the custard cream away that he had landed face first into during the rumblings of the explosion and hurtled after her.

"Oh no, no, no, where is he?" Bulma wailed.

Bulma flung rocks and plaster over her shoulder, Yamacha was floored since some of the pieces were heavier than anything she should have normally been able to lift. But while watching some nature documentaries, he had learned that creatures that were usually weak and frail could acquire unprecedented levels of strength when the life of someone they loved was in peril…

"Vegeta," Bulma kept calling out, while she continued burrowing through the debris for him. If Vegeta was stuck down there long enough, surrounded by this stratified pressure and heat, his body would eventually turn to coal that would match the cold lump of coal in her heart.

After some frantic minutes, a bloody and sliced hand shot through the rubble. Bulma screamed bloody murder that fell into a whimper as Vegeta pulled himself out from under the rocks. Bulma dashed to his side, supporting him by his head and shoulders as gently as she would an innocent baby.

Vegeta's eyes opened in slivers of black glass, and he saw Bulma's distressed face above him, with the outline of the sun ringing like a halo around her fluffy mane. Was this the angel of mercy or the angel of death? Vegeta wondered puzzled, but he was ready to face either personage nonetheless.

"Vegeta, are you alright?"

"Of course, I am," he teetered upright, miraculously maintaining his balance and fussily brushing away the angel's hand from off his shoulder.

"Why you, you idiot," Bulma berated him, "you could have destroyed my entire house."

Vegeta looked at her dazed, before toppling over once again. This was no angel but that she-devil Bulma.

Bulma caught him in her arms, and Vegeta didn't even try to stand on his own two feet again. For some reason in his injured state, he trusted her to catch him if he fell. Bulma repositioned them both until she was sitting on the ground with Vegeta's head in her lap.

"I'm fine." Vegeta struggled, bucking like a wild colt to get Bulma to unleash him, but his gruff protestations were muzzled by Bulma's soft caresses across his face. "I have to get stronger than Kakarot, so mind your own business," he choked.

"Vegeta," Bulma soothed in a nurturing voice that Yamacha had never heard before, "it's ok, that doesn't matter right now, you can worry about that later." Vegeta made some disapproving grunts, but Bulma just stroked his back.

And subsequently, Yamacha witnessed Vegeta falling captive to Bulma's mystical alchemy, where his hard iron yielded under her touch to molten gold. Vegeta drooped acceptingly, allowing Bulma to soothe him, no longer chomping at the bit and closing his eyes in peace.

The hard lump of coal in Bulma's chest lit up to warm them both and soon after, Vegeta was out cold. "Vegeta, Vegeta," Bulma yelled again, "wake up, you can't fall asleep now. The big lug just lost consciousness, he could have a head injury, he should stay awake," she muttered to herself.

Then Bulma saw the tips of Yamacha's shoes as he approached her while she cradled Vegeta. "Why are you just standing there?" she chided. "Go get help."

"Uh, ok." Yamacha circled back to the house, shouting for Bulma's parents and a medical team. When he returned, Vegeta was still in Bulma's protective hold. She hadn't realized that Yamacha was back, and she had a motherly expression on her face. Yamacha had this crazy feeling that he was intruding on a private moment, like catching a friend dressed only in their underwear, and he felt so gauche and considered just leaving.

Just then Panchy came up to the scene, and she was already bawling with a handkerchief in hand as Dr. Brief tried to console her. They were all flocking to Vegeta. The medics hauled Vegeta onto a stretcher, and they pushed Yamacha absentmindedly to the side to clear a path to bring Vegeta to the Capsule Corp. medical wing. The family all trailed after the medics, but it cut Yamacha to see Bulma alongside Vegeta, holding onto his bloody fingers. There was that feeling again of being surplus to requirements, of being the odd man out in his own relationship.

Yamacha sat down amidst the rocks all alone, feeling as if he had been the one flattened under the force of 300 times Earth's normal gravity. His thinned and outstretched body would be stepped on, and no one would perceive that it was him, and no one would care to save him, least of all Bulma who only looked at him now with her dead eyes. And not even all the king's horses and all the king's men would be able to put Yamacha back together again since it had been a prince and a princess who had pulverized him into pieces in the first place.

The crisis to save Vegeta's life had been mitigated, as his condition had stabilized once he had been placed under a medically induced coma, and all the medical personnel and even Bulma's blubbering mother had long since departed his room, yet Bulma still remained. She leaned against the doorframe, looking from Vegeta's mummified bandaged look to the tacky chintzy curtains that had become discoloured from too much sun exposure, to the peeling wallpaper and back again. She didn't know why she lingered there, nothing in the room had changed for the past hour, and all she had done was count the passage of time using the intermittent beeps from the heart-monitoring device. But there was this unshakeable feeling that she was waiting for something, waiting for something from an unknown source that nevertheless would have the power to propel some sort of change.

Her neck started to fall to her chest, as she began to doze, when she heard something. It was a gurgle that just barely managed to escape the closed tunnel of Vegeta's throat, that sounded like the death rattle that is the final proclamation from those whose lungs are filled with fluid. Bulma woke right up when she realized that Vegeta was waking up, the doctors had administered enough anaesthetic to take out an elephant, but that must have not been enough for a Saiyan prince. She approached his bed and jumped as if defibrillated.

"Kakarot," his voice came out jaggedly.

Bulma looked down at his distorted features that held no trace of his usual swagger and braggadocio, but were full of sorrow instead. She had fallen for his self-aggrandization derived from his pride, so she had never viewed him as someone real, only as a caricature. However, now she could appreciate that he was very handsome, just like a fairy tale prince, only grouchier and more troubled. He hadn't let her see him openly like this before. He had always concealed from her his charms that lay in his suffering and determination.

Vegeta spoke once more and after only emitted indecipherable groans, "I will surpass you. You can count on it."

Was this what she had been waiting for? Were these the words meant only for her ears despite having no commonality with her? They must have been, for what else could have made her feel like a leaf caught in an updraft that was swirling further and further away from solid ground? His few words had injected her with some glow-in-the-dark isotope that spread throughout her body, letting her see the tenable brilliance of him. Vegeta had died once, and today he had almost died again, yet on his second deathbed, he was still trying to fight. She was incredibly impressed by his inner light that would never go out.

A rift had developed in her opinion of Vegeta. She had only known his shallows, but now she could look down into his depths and what she saw there was deeper than anything she could have ever imagined. In that moment, where he was injured, where he could show vulnerability from deep within his subconscious, she saw him for the first time as a man, a man who had foibles and insecurities like all the rest, a man who could have dreams and even nightmares. A man with a heart.

Really? she asked herself astounded. This was Vegeta? Could his hard shell really be the harbour for a heart? Bulma cautiously put her hand to his heart. At first, she felt nothing but then with a radiating tingle like the beginnings of cardiac arrest, she felt it. "It's there," she marveled, "his heart. It's just fossilized." His heart beat strongly, just like hers.

And then she remembered Son-kun whispering to Kuririn that Vegeta had cried when he knew it was all over and that all he had to show for himself was irrevocable failure. And she felt that same infarction, that same deep-seated pain, that same emptiness of her heart turning to coal, that she had felt just earlier today when she had thought that he might have died in the gravity chamber.

Vegeta's heart was telling her hand one laboured beat at a time, the tale of a long-lost civilization and of long-lost emotions. It was her duty to excavate it, to dig up all those ruins, and to restore them until they shone gold. Was this what her dream meant? Was it telling her to become his friend?

His moans had quietened while her hand rested over his heart. He lived and he felt. He was a Saiyan, but he looked so wounded, so forlorn, so _human_ that she could not leave him. Bulma had made up her mind. "I'll be right back, Vegeta." She quickly went to get some paperwork and then propped up a chair beside him.

"Bulma, you're still in here?" Yamacha's head peeked in through the open doorway of the infirmary. His girlfriend was sitting by another man's side and from the empty drink canisters and the messy sheets of paper scattered across the adjacent desk, it appeared as if she had been there for the entire afternoon.

Bulma started at his question, apparently, she had been lost in her thoughts. She rubbed tiredly at her eyes and Yamacha remarked that she looked completely unpresentable, as she was still dressed in the same dust and blood covered dress as before and that her hair was a frizzy abomination. Yamacha bit down on his lip in irritated disappointment. "You aren't even close to being ready to go and cocktail hour begins in 30 minutes."

"I'm not going," Bulma said in a flat disinterested tone. She finally glanced up at him and small applications of anger rouged her cheeks like the makeup she should have been wearing. "Why do you think it would be appropriate to party after everything that's happened today?"

Yamacha was completely unprepared for that response. "Nothing that pivotal happened. Vegeta self-detonated, like we all knew he would eventually do, your house is still intact and there were no casualties," Yamacha detailed, summarizing the episode on his fingers. "It's just another day and another explosion at Capsule Corp., those occur often enough. So what's the big deal? Nothing like that has ever stopped you from partying in the past. If you want, we can pretend we're attending an end of the world party, in honour of today's events."

"I'm not going," Bulma repeated. She turned away from Yamacha, and folded the damp washcloth, that she had been angrily wringing in her hands while he had been speaking in half, and applied it to Vegeta's forehead.

"Haha, Bulma, you joker, the last thing Vegeta needs is a babysitter. There's tons of staff here to monitor him. You can't even argue with him right now." He pulled on the sleeve of her dress so that she would have to face him. "So let's go. I don't mind if we're a little late. Besides, it was your idea anyways to have a night on the town to reward me for training so hard in the desert. That's why you invited me over." Yamacha turned her around entirely and tried to steal a warm embrace, that hopefully would make her come to her senses. But he could feel the heat leaving her body at his embrace, like hot coals that have suddenly cooled. He slowly uncoupled his arms from her as she had left him shivering.

"No," Bulma stated more firmly.

"I didn't realize you cared about him that much," the disgust was clear in his voice.

She tossed the washcloth into the basin on the desk with a defiant plop. "I'm all he has, I can't just leave him here to suffer or Kami forbid, die all alone."

"He won't die," Yamacha said, unable to believe how much Bulma was overreacting. "But if he did, would anyone even call it a loss instead of a gain?"

She shook her head at him with even more pronounced disgust. "You're so hateful. I don't believe Vegeta is inherently evil. He's had a hard life, he doesn't know any other way."

"What's wrong with hating the one who killed you?" Yamacha was now beginning to yell.

"But he didn't kill you," Bulma corrected, with the heat he had tried to steal back in her eyes.

"It was under his instructions that I died. He's every bit as culpable as that Saibaman."

"You know there are shades of grey there. It wasn't as simple as he willed it, so you died. And Son-kun can forgive him, so why can't you? We all would have died on Namek if he hadn't assisted us. I've told you this, Gohan and Kuririn and Son-kun have all told you this too. Hell, I bet even Piccolo would be loathe to agree. I'm in his debt. If I can make sure that he doesn't die today, then I'm just repaying the favour." Bulma didn't realize that her personal account of Namek had changed and was now an adaptation that she never would have admitted to just a few short months ago.

Yamacha frowned as he considered what she had said. "After this, you don't owe him anything, not that I think you even owe him anything now, but this is the end of it."

"Yamacha, it's more than that, I feel guilty too. One of my creations almost killed a man...how could I have lived with myself if that had happened?"

Yamacha's tone was pure hatred that until now he had only heard come forth from Vegeta's mouth. "You wouldn't have lost any sleep since you would have rid the universe of a tyrant. Sometimes I think you care more about him than me. If it were me lying injured there, would you be even half as bothered?"

Bulma came right up to him and Yamacha felt like he was being burned. How had he ever thought that her body was growing cold?

"Don't you remember what I did for you? What I sacrificed for you? I went all the way to Namek - to the other side of the galaxy for you. I would have laid down my life for yours. And in return, you barrage me with accusations?"

Yamacha put his hands up, accepting fault. Was his hatred making him forget the important facts? "I remember," he stammered, "I'm sorry."

"Don't forget it." Bulma picked up the washcloth from the basin and continued wiping the sweat from Vegeta's brow.

"He's not going to be grateful, having you here to nurse him. It'll hurt his pride." At that thought, Yamacha felt some vindictive pleasure. "Be prepared to have all your help thrown back into your face."

"That's ok, let him be angry, let him argue with me, as long as he lives to fight another day."

That testament sent his paranoia and resentment into overdrive. "Tell me again, why did you invite him to stay here? You said it was because you felt sorry for him, but was it actually because you were attracted to him? Was it a star-crossed love at first sight? You want to win him over like those sad lonely women that write love letters to convicts, don't you? But why don't you stick to something that won't kill us all? Why don't you stick to inanimate objects instead of trying to light a powder keg? Vegeta really isn't that complicated and shouldn't be that interesting to you. If you're bored, here's an idea, why don't you investigate time travel or how to deactivate some killer androids? That should keep you busy for the next two and a half years. I'm still going to the party, whether you like it or not, Vegeta isn't going to impede on my fun."

He had wanted to compose himself after saying that last sentence but insanity hitched a ride with him again. "But why, why are you letting Vegeta infiltrate our relationship so much?"

Throughout his entire spiel, Bulma had crossed her arms and looked at Yamacha with narrowed eyes. Although it would have totally been within her rights to scream and cuss Yamacha into oblivion, she decided that cold disdain would be more unsettling to him. "I'm not letting Vegeta do anything, I actually prevent him from doing a lot of things he'd like, especially to you. You're the one who's allowed Vegeta to infiltrate your mind. I know how you look at me and him when we're in the same room together and how you try to keep us apart. But all these suspicions and your obsession with me and him and what we are and aren't doing, it's because you're insecure and don't trust me. If you don't trust me then what do you have to offer me, Yamacha? Isn't trust the foundation of a relationship? Let me ease your fears though. Everything you suspect is unfounded and you've been stressed out for no reason. There have been problems in our relationship long before Vegeta arrived. Whatever sort of dalliance you think me and Vegeta are engaging in, it's all in your head. Don't listen to the voices in your head."

In the past, this might have been enough to assuage Yamacha's fears, but he didn't fully believe her. He guessed that she was right and that he no longer trusted her. "Those voices are ringing loud and clear," he muttered at her.

"Have a great time at the party," Bulma said acidly.

"And you have a great time too in the company of a monster." Yamacha looked at Bulma one last time and spied all he had lost and all Vegeta had undeservedly gained, and then he left and shut the door.

Yamacha was currently seated at the bar in one of the hippest, swankiest supper clubs in West City. He should have been joined there by Bulma and at this moment, they should have been feeding each other oysters, chocolates, fondue and other such arousing gastronomical delights that would have been the prelude to a night of passion. But he was a dateless wonder and was just sifting through the complimentary bowl of gourmet nut mix while drinking the cheapest beer on tap. Bulma had bragged to him that this locale was such a great hole in the wall and was so exclusive that it had no official address and all potential patrons had to be thoroughly screened before being granted admission. She had told him that she had only just qualified from the careful vetting process, and that such a determined fighter, who would willingly separate from his amazing girlfriend in order to train, deserved a taste of the finer things in life.

Despite Bulma ditching him for Vegeta, he still went to the same place that she had been planning to take him to, mostly out of spite and a bit out of agreeing that he did deserve a special treat. Training for a month under the hot desert sun was not possible for most fighters…although he had taken many breaks to enjoy the air-conditioned comfort of his capsule house that came with all the frills. But his training and accommodations weren't cushy, not at all. What he hadn't foreseen though was the interrogation of his credentials by the bouncers at the door, nor the further emasculation of only being given entry by invoking Bulma's name. The staff had waved him inside once they realized that Mr. Bulma already had pre-approved clearance. Yamacha sulked while replaying the embarrassing situation in his head.

To his right, a peppy voice chirped, "Why so blue? A hunk like you shouldn't ever get the blues."

Blue. Yamacha was instantly reminded of Bulma's blue hair and eyes, it was not the best way to start a conversation.

He turned towards the person in irritation, ready to shut them down along with their tired pick-up line, but then his jaw dropped, and he knew that if he said anything that he'd just begin babbling like a teen with a crush. The woman beside him was unbelievably good looking with a heart-shaped face framed by golden curls and delicate elfin features that were the polar opposite to Bulma's in-your-face voluptuousness. And her most winning feature was her megawatt smile, that he knew she was smiling just for him.

"Why don't I get you a drink?" she offered. "Just a little something to chase the blues away?" She signalled to the bartender, who quickly returned with a glass filled with an orange fluid that looked like out of control flames.

At the thought of flames, he thought of Vegeta's hair, and with ire, he picked up the glass and gulped it down.

"Slow down," the girl laughed, "that wasn't supposed to be a shot. You don't want to go straight from depression to puking."

The lovely woman probed his face with her eyes, and Yamacha felt renewed self-consciousness as she focused on his scars. He expected her to make some half-assed excuse and then to hastily retreat once she realized that his looks weren't as perfect as the candlelit milieu had led her to believe. But instead, her smile extended as far across her face as it would stretch, so much that Yamacha thought it had to be a mask, as she said, "You wouldn't happen to be Yamacha, as in the star baseball player Yamacha?"

Yamacha swallowed thickly, unsure how to answer, but feeling some nascent pride envelop him like ki during a power-up. He had forgotten that he was a celebrity, well a minor celebrity, but one nonetheless. "Yeah, I suppose that's me," he chuckled.

"Wow," the girl enthused, putting a fluttering hand to her chest, "this is going to sound so lame, but when I was younger, I was the president of your fan club. I can't believe that I'm finally meeting you, pardon me if I start making weird squealing noises, I'm just so starstruck."

"Well, you never know what's going to happen and who you're going to meet,"…and who's going to usurp your life and steal your girlfriend, Yamacha added in darkly.

"You're telling me. Feel free to decline if I'm being too presumptuous, but would you mind coming to my booth and meeting my girlfriends? We are all hardcore fans of yours and would just die if you signed some autographs and took some photos with us."

Yamacha felt like the king of the world, in that topsy-turvy bubble of Capsule Corp. he was nobody, but in the real world, he was a somebody, a real winner. Yes, he was important, someone desirable and a champion stud, so why had he allowed Bulma to slash his confidence?

The girl had her hand out to him, as a proposition that was teeming with unspoken sexual favours, and Yamacha took it without question. "I do love to please my fans," he replied with some flirtation, as the girl escorted him past the point of no return.

...

Vegeta was in the back-up gravity ship performing one fingered push-ups. He was trying to use the repetitive motions to regulate his mind and body into that sense of stark invincibility that was expected from the perfect warrior, but he was failing miserably yet again. His mind was consumed with the aftereffects of his latest humiliation and the conclusions that could be drawn therein. The accident with the ship exploding was unforgivably sloppy and had the fingerprints of a novice warrior instead of a seasoned one. He imagined the boorish laughter of Nappa and Raditz, the Bordeaux-stained upturn of Freeza's lips and the unintended condescension of Kakarot patting him on the back, letting him know that these things happen, if they all knew that he had fallen into his own trap, from his amplified ki that had rebounded off the bots and back onto himself before splitting through the walls of the ship. He had such a poor grasp of his meagre strength that he couldn't even prevent himself from self-immolating. His own ki that channeled through him hot and electric, was no longer like a magic spell flowing out from his fingers that could either enchant or horrify, but was now more like some viscous sludge that he could no longer conduct. He levitated into the air, doing a support-free plank as the gravitons in a dense mass tried pulling him down lower than he already was.

He could remember where his mind had journeyed while he had been unconscious. He had found himself on a never-ending road of darkness that only had one direction – forwards. But despite this lack of spatial dimensions, he had felt like he had entered a maze in which he was hopelessly lost. Every time he had tried to move forwards, he had felt the road grow in front of him as if some cruel god were tarring and smoothing out new road just to spite him. He could walk, he could run, he could cry, he could shout, but he was stranded in the same position despite his exertions just like a rat in a cage. Sometimes there would be a golden brume in the darkness and it would come from visions of Kakarot and that boy from the future, who were somehow leaping ahead along with the arrow of time while he stagnated. He couldn't catch them no matter how fast he ran.

And sometimes in that maze, he had heard noises, sadistic taurine noises, the snort of warm breath and the clopping of satanic hooves, that were coming ever closer. And just when he thought he could see the monster's red eyes, that were strangely lifeless like an android's, he had suddenly awakened.

And right beside his bed was that vulgar woman. But what had she been doing there? He had looked over at her while she was fast asleep, with her brows knitted softly together and with a stitch of worry across her pale bone white face. She appeared more docile than he remembered. The rule of law in all her commands had been moderated, yet this sight of vulnerability from her seemed much more obnoxious than any of her previous behaviour towards him.

He had removed himself slowly from the bed and had walked behind her. He had seen her dress, the same one as before, now polka dotted red from his dried blood, and had realized that she must have been there for quite some time. What was this? He was the prince of all Saiyans. he did not require supervision. He had wanted to whack her on the back of her head for daring to watch him. Did she obtain some gratification from his suffering? Did she like that he was losing to Kakarot in the same way that her lover lost to anyone who wasn't also human?

He was about to strike her and to warn her to stay away from him and to never dare tell anyone about what she had seen happen to him, when the sun's rays had suddenly beamed on her body, the light making her hair sparkle like sapphires, the light reflected only on her while the rest of the room remained in shadow. His semi-conscious illusion of her above him with a halo around her head had returned to his memory.

 _She wasn't there to ridicule him._

He had growled once, not wanting to punish her anymore but wanting to get as far away from her as he could.

As he floated upside down, with his blood pooling in his head, the screen in the ship flared to life and Bulma was glowering at him, her brows were no longer knitted but were the needles themselves, while her lips were sewn into a thin thread.

Bulma had awoken in the medical wing from the sunlight warming her back and creeping under her eyelids. It hadn't even taken her a second to realize that Vegeta was gone, and she had a pretty good theory about where he had hobbled off to. She had hurried to her lab and wasn't surprised to see everything in shambles, with the drawers all open and with papers and books strewn haplessly around. She had searched through one specific drawer, and just as she had suspected, the duplicate capsule 3, that Vegeta had forced her to complete in the event that her work was imperfect and would fail, not because he would destroy the other model, was gone.

She had gone to her computer and had opened the video chat connection to the gravity ship. She could now see right into the ship, and she first saw Vegeta hanging upside down like a vampire bat in front of her, but her eyes drifted to the gravity reading, which was at 400 gs, 100 gs more than the level that had caused the explosion. That idiot, he really does want to kill himself.

"Vegeta," she screeched, "you are in no condition to be training, do you want to have another accident?"

Bulma's voice wafted down to him like a steam of excrement, carrying along the stink of concern and condemnation. As her voice ringed in his ears, he became distracted, and the ball of pride he had been pushing up a hill of obstacles, rolled back onto himself, with the force of gravity helping it along, until he collapsed onto his lowest point of zero displacement. That bothersome human slave, he grimaced to himself, while trying to pick himself back up. Was she trying to play another one of her games with him now when he had serious matters to attend to?

"Oh, so I'm right," she gloated, "you can't handle more training right now."

God, why couldn't she just let him be a beast and roam free? She had never tried to convince him to not train before. "You miserable onna, would you like to live after these three years?"

Bulma blinked at him. "Of course, I would prefer to live. I'm a young beautiful woman with my entire life ahead of me."

"Then shut up!" he vociferated.

Bulma felt a momentary shock, and was about to disable the gravity from her computer, but then she saw Vegeta's eyes boring into hers as he finally managed to lift himself back up. She saw that in the maze of his eyes, a minotaur lurked, whose horns would eventually impale her unless she could somehow manage to grab the raging bull by its horns and make it go her way.

She didn't want to make his life any more difficult than it already was, she wanted to understand and sympathize with him instead. It was crazy - most people wanted to escape mazes but she wanted a way into his when she was already safely free on the outside. And once in, she knew that there would be no exits, no way out. She didn't say anything, but watched the tension ripple in knots across his back, as he began to train again. And she no longer had the will to tell him to be more self-preserving and to not try to deliver himself from his wretched lot. Although his body looked as though he had been crucified, and that it was calling for death to take him, she knew that he wouldn't die, at least not for today, and that instead he would overcome his handicaps by the force of sheer momentum.

Vegeta's stare was able to cut Bulma down to her base roots, and he knew then that although she had tried to deny it, she really was good at heart. And even though he hated that she was disrupting his workout, there was some strange need that lasted just for a nanosecond, and that even he was not consciously aware of, that on some level, he liked that she had interrupted him and wanted it to happen again, just to prove that someone out there knew he existed and was affected by him and all that he was trying to accomplish. For that almost undetectable fraction of a fraction of a second, it didn't wound his pride by rather bolstered it, that someone could behold a warrior such as him, that had been sent out to pasture after the ship's detonation, going straight back into the thick of the killing fields. But that sudden feeling was walled in on all sides by another mass of hedges in the maze of his soul, and maybe it would never be revealed again. As all that happened down in his depths, Vegeta had only just been sneering at Bulma until she had disconnected the video link.

...

Bulma still had the receiver of the phone pressed to her ear, as she listened to the dial tone, stunned. Yamacha had just hung up on her. For the first time ever, he had hung up on her. So he had finally grown a pair, it had just taken 14 years, and Bulma was very displeased at his timing. She just might have to go over to his apartment and castrate him.

For the past few weeks, Yamacha had been treating her to radio silence and Bulma had been expecting some silent treatment from him. But in the past, he had never held a grudge for very long and his anger was more of the childish variety that could be placated with a pat on the head, some complimentary words and sometimes even with some sweets and the promise of a special surprise. But now his anger was a little more adult and passive aggressive.

Bulma had been reflecting over all the growth and adventures that her and Yamacha had experienced from their first hunts for the dragon balls to the many Tenkaichi Budokais. And she couldn't stop the nostalgia from filling her with warmth and gooey tenderness, until she had felt like a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie. Over the course of the past few days, she had decided that she would make one last ditch effort to save their relationship.

That was why had called him, to arrange a date, and in the process, she could insert some well-placed words about how much she missed him and how things weren't the same without him. But Yamacha had seemed completely uninterested in everything she had to say, and there was some buildup of frosty flakiness in his voice, like the kind that collects on a wedding cake that's been shoved into the back of the freezer and that's only eaten once a year. And instead of freshness, Bulma had felt that same stale overdone feeling race right back.

"No, it's alright, Bulma," Yamacha had politely declined, "I'm pretty busy nowadays and anyways, I can't stand anymore of your constant bickering with Vegeta." And after telling her that half-baked excuse, he had hung up on her.

Busy doing what? Bulma thought suspiciously, as she finally slammed the phone receiver back into its cradle. Yamacha was an unemployed, two-bit washed up baseball player, who definitely wasn't wasting his days away on training. So what could he possibly be doing?

And she didn't miss his underlying jab, that the entire fiasco between them was all because of Vegeta. There it was again, Vegeta, Vegeta, Vegeta. Yamacha was as obsessed with Vegeta as Vegeta was obsessed with Son-kun. Was there some homoerotic memo that had been lost in transit that would explain to her why all these males were more interested in competing with each other instead of lavishing attention on her? As far as she would tell, she was hotter and definitely less sweaty than any of them.

And as for Vegeta, Bulma sighed, what she had told Yamacha, that there was nothing between her and Vegeta and that it was all in his head, she had thought it was true, but the moment it had left her lips, it had sounded like lies. However, she understood now why she had been thinking about him so much lately. It was because he was just a cheap surrogate for the man she really wanted, and the expectations and fantasy she had affiliated with him would never reasonably be fulfilled. He was an empty vessel that she had overfilled with her own unsated longing. The thoughts had continued for so long since Vegeta would never be a romantic prospect, so there wouldn't be any horrible dates or bad sex to rupture the illusion.

She still wanted to get to know him better, and not only be his hostess. There was still something intriguing about him that called to all her scientific instincts to study, but there was nothing romantic about it. And she hadn't even been presented with the chance to do any further field work on him, since after the explosion, instead of being deterred, Vegeta was cloistered in the gravity ship more than ever. He was too preoccupied to even spare some words of contempt for her even though she had been practically begging for his insults like a beggar reaching for some coins.

Bulma picked up the keys to her convertible from the table. She was going to pay Yamacha a little surprise visit, if she decided that she wanted to try and work things out then that was what they were going to do.

Bulma had taken the liberty of allowing herself into Yamacha's apartment using her copy of his house key. But once inside, the atmosphere had somehow felt different, she knew nothing about ki, but she could sense something thick and noxious in the air. It was the same uncomfortable environmental awareness that she experienced when she worked with heavy metals and that would always give her a headache afterwards. "Hey Yamacha," she called out, but there was no answer, not even a peep from Puar, which was suspicious in itself since the little guy was always hovering around.

She killed some time by watching TV while she waited for Yamacha to return home. But soon, she heard the faint creaking of springs coming from the direction of the bedroom. Bulma muted the TV program, and listened closely…there was more and more creaking, just like the ones that would happen when her and Yamacha had sex on his rickety bed. Bulma jumped to her feet from the sofa. Oh no, that motherfucker better not be cheating on me again.

Bulma opened the door to Yamacha's bedroom, and saw his beige bed sheets rolled up into an odd lumpy shape that was definitely hiding something unseemly, reminding her of the shrouds used to cover dead bodies. From beneath the sheets, she heard a sexy baby voice gush, "Oh Yamacha-sama, you're too big for me." Bulma had to stop herself from gagging. Yamacha-sama? Too big? Pass her the sick bag please.

Bulma ripped the sheets away, and saw two bodies mid-coitus that were wrapped around each other so tightly that they resembled conjoined twins, but she could distinctly make out Yamacha's less than toned behind. "Now what's going on here?" Bulma breathed with deadly severity. "Too busy getting busy, _Yamacha-sama?_ " she mocked.

Yamacha instantly whirled around and looked at her as if she were an oni from the afterlife that was going to drag him back down to hell. He was back in his boxers quicker than she could see, while the girl he was with stared at Bulma with dull eyes that were the colour of dishwater.

"You vowed to never cheat on me again, Yamacha, so who's this groupie then?"

"I'm not a groupie," the girl protested in a high rising intonation.

"Shut up, slut, I'm the one talking."

The girl's mouth went into a perfect O of surprise before she closed it, and wrapped the bedsheets petulantly around her body.

"Where'd you find this one, outside the local high school?" Bulma asked derisively.

"Bulma…," Yamacha stuttered, "this isn't what you think…"

"So it's worse than what I think? Because I don't see anything good going on here." Bulma's initial idea from when Yamacha had disconnected their call, to castrate him, came rushing back to her. Yes, genital mutilation would be a brilliant response to this situation. She stealthily removed a souped-up Derringer gun from out of her purse, that she always carried in the event that an attacker would make the big mistake of targeting her, and started firing it at Yamacha's nether regions.

Yamacha's feet swayed wildly like a puppet on a string, to dodge her bullets, while his sidepiece shrieked and dove under the covers. He placed his hands protectively around his junk and said, "Whoa, Bulma, calm down, let's talk about this like adults."

"This is no parlay, I'm aiming to kill," she responded with nonchalance, like she was just gunning down tin cans, and to prove her point, she shot at a picture of Yamacha that hanged on the wall. The entire portrait fell to the floor, and there was a smoking hole in the photo where Yamacha's crotch once was.

"Kami, Bulma stop!"

Bulma raised her gun to his head this time, but when she pulled the trigger, there was only a click indicating an empty chamber. "Well, fuck," Bulma said disappointedly, throwing the gun to Yamacha's feet. "I ran out of bullets. I guess you get to live, but we are finished. You've thrown away the best thing to have ever happened to you. Congratulations." Bulma strode from the room and out of his apartment with the toughness of a wild west gunslinger.

"Bulma, wait," Yamacha's voice trailed after her, but she didn't turn back and wasn't even tempted to do so, for she was truly done with him.

"What a bitch," his mistress exclaimed, as she poked her head out from under the blankets. "Who was that anyways? She looked a lot like the heiress of Capsule Corp., but I read in a magazine that you two had broken up."

Yamacha had completely forgotten about the girl who had just a few minutes ago, been cooing his name. He gazed blankly at her and remarked that she wasn't as attractive as he had first thought. Her golden hair was just straw that swished around her head like the bristles on a witch's broom. And her trowelled on makeup had oozed onto his pillow during the course of their activities.

The consequences of his actions hit him then. He wanted Bulma and loved only her. Why had he acted so retaliatively rather than having a serious conversation about his insecurities with her? He had lost her, he had lost his true love to his philandering. He looked at the girl he had so foolishly replaced Bulma with and felt like he had an upset stomach. Why had he settled for a shoestring when he had been playing in the big leagues? The girl was still asking him angry questions in valleyspeak about the showdown that had just happened, but he ignored her and pulled on his clothes, and went to chase after Bulma.

Bulma ran through all the red lights as she drove back home and her rage multiplied to nuclear levels. She was so enraged that if her anger could have been transmitted into ki, she was sure she'd be as powerful as a Super Saiyan. As she popped through the bottleneck of rush hour traffic, she glimpsed Yamacha in her rear-view mirror, flying at a stalking distance behind her. "That fucker," Bulma cursed, "I wish I had another bullet to shoot straight up his urethra and back into his balls."

Yamacha had never been the most faithful boyfriend. As a teenager, he had been so painfully shy that his testicles had practically curled back up into his thighs at the sight of a woman. It was only thanks to Bulma's influence that he had vanquished his fear of women and had transformed from a timid church mouse into some wannabe Casanova. With that change in character, he had had a few missteps with allowing opportunistic females into his inner circle…and bed…but Bulma had always stupidly forgiven him. After each and every slip-up, Yamacha would solemnly swear to never do it again as Bulma was the only one he loved and those other women were just mistakes. Yamacha had told her that his word was his bond, since that was all he had to give, being the former desert bandit that he was. But in actuality, Bulma mused, he never even really had that to give, he had never provided her with an iron-clad bond but rather with some flimsy little daisy chain instead. Now that she contemplated it, she had been Yamacha's long-suffering girlfriend for even longer than Chi Chi had been Son-kun's long-suffering wife, but for different reasons naturally.

Bulma finally made it back home, with her car making a big doughnut in the lawn. She was walking to the back entrance of her house, when she saw Vegeta approaching the sliding doors from the opposite direction. Once they finally met at the doors, she heard a voice behind them that made her cringe.

"Aha, I knew you would immediately go back to him," Yamacha said accusingly, as if the simple act of her and Vegeta heading back into the house at the same time was a large enough indiscretion to invalidate all of his wrongdoing.

The only fight Vegeta wasn't interested in was a lovers's quarrel, so he was about to open the doors to go inside when Bulma spoke and thoroughly confused him.

"Yamacha, you just don't get it. I don't love Vegeta and now I don't love you either." Kami, she felt like she was getting a second chance to relive her teenage years by admitting that.

There was a small pause where Yamacha had to arbitrate with his doubts. Were his delusions really that hyperbolic and had Bulma been innocent all along? "Bulma please," Yamacha pleaded, but Bulma put up a manicured hand to silence any further apologies from him.

It was too late for that. There was only so much shit that Yamacha could dump onto her before she could no longer just flush it away and forget about it. "It's over, Yamacha. Now stop following me and go away, or I'll let Vegeta kill you."

Vegeta smirked and cracked his knuckles menacingly. "It's about time."

"Bulma, we can work this out," he started and stopped, as he saw her looking at Vegeta, almost as if she were gauging his reaction and maybe approval concerning this real-life soap opera. And the last thread of Yamacha's dignity snapped. "You don't have to worry about me getting in your way anymore, Bulma. You two deserve each other. I hope he's everything you've dreamed of …or had nightmares about," he ended ominously.

Bulma and Vegeta exchanged a look and then they both erupted into snide laughter.

Those two howling hyenas who Yamacha had been observing, they were actually the spectators, whereas he was the sad zoo animal, as he had devalued himself in front of them with his desperation. From their laughter that merged into the same wavelength, his doubts finally gave up the ghost along with his relationship, because he knew it then as an unequivocal truth, that they were one in the same.

Once Yamacha had left Capsule Corp. property, Vegeta finally gibed her for the first time in weeks. "What a disgrace, even for an Earthling, you have no self-respect to put up with that."

"Actually, I do," Bulma smirked back at him. "Yamacha and I are history. Good riddance to bad trash. I have seen the light up in here," she said tapping at her head.

"Really, onna? It still looks pretty dim up there to me."

Bulma's smirk reversed into a pout, and as she brought her hand down from her head, she noticed that she had removed a leaf from her hair. At a closer glance though, it wasn't just any leaf, but a four-leaf clover, and Bulma looked up and down from the lucky charm to Vegeta.


	3. Closer

Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Ball, I'm just borrowing the characters.

 **Chapter 3 – Closer**

Vegeta was done his training for the day, and as he entered the house, he heard distressed whimpering. Something was finally happening on this insipid planet that boasted of its singular peace. He had known all along that it had to be for show and that the Earth was not any more peaceful than anywhere else in this dog-eat-dog universe. He felt the revitalization broil through him, that only the threat of violence could bring. He rushed towards the simpering sounds that were coming from the living room.

There was a muted glow in the room, that was illuminated only by the light of the roaring fireplace, that seemed unnecessary with the balmy weather in West City. Vegeta could detect no foes, no one of consequence really, he only observed Bulma kneeling at the ledge of the fireplace, feeding something into the flames.

Bulma spotted a familiar flame-shaped coiffure reflected in the flames. "Oh Vegeta, it's you," she said quietly.

"What's going on here?" he demanded. "From those horrible noises you were making I thought you were being killed. I didn't want to miss the bloodbath."

"Haha, sorry to disappoint, I'll still be around and kicking for some time yet. I'm not dying, but it feels that way, here especially," she said pointing to her heart.

"Hmph, a wholly human ailment, how dreary."

Bulma cast something else into the fire, and in the flares of light, Vegeta could see that they were pictures of Yamacha.

"You want to rip a photo, Vegeta? I promise it's very rewarding."

Vegeta could agree that all traces of the idiot should be burnt out of existence, but he didn't see it as a worthwhile pursuit for him. The mystery had been solved, there was no one to fight, it was always just Bulma with her ever varied caterwauling. The Earth was once more a peaceful safe haven not living up to his bloody expectations.

As he turned away, Bulma cried out, "Wait Vegeta, don't leave, come have a drink with me."

"No, and you've had too many as it is," he declared disapprovingly.

"What these?" she said tallying the empty glasses in a wide radius around her, "That's nothing."

Vegeta didn't think it was prudent to have so much alcohol so close to open flames, but it would be her that would get burned and not him, so it didn't matter.

"Go ahead, go run along Vegeta." Bulma made a shooing gesture with her hand. "I didn't take you for a light-weight though," she inserted slyly.

"What'd you say?" Vegeta wasn't following.

"Light-weight, got it, you aren't familiar with the vernacular. It means you can't handle your liquor."

"I'll have you know that I could drink your weight in liquor and still have all my faculties intact," he retorted angrily. What was it with this woman that she would oppose him at every opportunity?

"And that's supposed to impress me?" She got up from the floor, holding onto her skirt for balance, as if she had just finished performing a curtsy. "Don't you always say that I'm just a measly little human that even a small gust of wind could brush aside? Now if you could drink Yajirobe's weight in liquor, that'd be quite a feat."

"Who the hell is that?" There were too many Earthlings to keep track of, they were like locusts.

"Yajirobe? That's the guy who cut your tail...oh never mind, he's not important," she said, catching herself in time.

Vegeta eyed her suspiciously, as Bulma teetered over to the sofa, emerging with a large bottle that had been hidden under one of the cushions. Bulma swung the bottle of liquor in his face. "What do you say about a night cap?"

"No," he refused definitively.

"Just one teensy shot?" she wheedled.

"No."

"You're no fun, making me drink by myself." There was no need to mention that she had gotten a huge head-start over him, all by herself. Bulma poured a brown liquid into two shot glasses. "How about this, if you can drink yours first you can leave but if I finish mine first you have to stay here and hang out with me for awhile?"

"You're in no position to bargain with me. I can and will leave right now."

"So you know that I'll win so you're backing off already?" Bulma taunted to his retreating figure.

Vegeta rounded on her, unable to ignore the call of competition, and seized a shot glass from her peremptory fingers. "Give me that."

Bulma hailed him with her glass, "Kanpai Vegeta, may the best woman win."

Vegeta downed his shot, but Bulma had already finished hers. "What? How?" he sputtered.

"I win," Bulma cheered. "I can drink any man under the table."

"Apparently," Vegeta said disconcertedly, shocked at the speed Bulma could acquire once properly motivated. "I did not think you'd be such a sponge, but it makes sense that you'd be quick to suck up every toxic element while being slow to absorb anything beneficial, based on that weak cretin you always have sponging off you."

That reference to Yamacha pierced a hole into the protective ethanol layer of her consciousness, and the harsh reality of her breakup came streaming back in. Fortunately, Vegeta insulted her again, so she that she didn't have to address the shame of being a scorned woman.

"Do you even have any of your liver left?"

"My hepatocytes are pink and healthy, thank you," she clipped. Bulma noted Vegeta's irked look, that he always wore when presented with a word or concept that his mind couldn't wrap itself around, especially when she tried to explain the complexities of her inventions to him. "What? Ok, I guess you aren't familiar with physiology either. Hepatocytes are liver cells."

She gave him a practiced and automatic smile that was the same one that is stapled onto every service industry worker's face. Her smile was just a temporary band-aid to cover herself from the holes of pain that Yamacha had caused her. "Now for your side of the deal," she said with her voice coming out a bit off-key. "Come take a seat, I've got ice cream and chocolates too," she bribed, holding a heart-shaped box of bonbons out to him.

Vegeta sat rigidly at the other end of the sofa, as far away from her as he could be. "Don't expect me to stay here long," he said, snatching at one of the offered chocolates.

"How's your training going?" Bulma asked conversationally.

Vegeta looked at her with ire.

"Badly, huh? All the more reason then to drink," she rallied, trying to brighten both of their moods. Bulma picked up a tumbler from the floor, filling it to the brim from another bottle of alcohol she had lying around. She placed the glass on the coffee table right in front of him. "Bottoms up, tough guy, this will make you feel better in no time."

As Vegeta sipped at his drink, wondering if Bulma would dare poison it, he saw her face sag a bit, with her forced chipperness gone. He realized that she had been crying, her red-rimmed eyes were a garish reminder that she had been all maudlin when he had first interrupted her. Her changing disposition made the situation even more spurious, and again he had to wonder why he was sitting here, right in the middle of the lion's den of her emotions.

Bulma ringed the top of her glass, regarding him hesitantly. "Vegeta, do you ever feel like you've been cheated?" She really hadn't wanted to discuss her failed relationship with Yamacha with him, but her subconscious wounds, accoutered by alcohol had lifted her off from rational footing and up into an airheaded stratosphere. She didn't wait for his answer, prattling on, speaking mostly to herself and not to him. "I was with Yamacha for 14 years and what did that accomplish? I just got old while my girlish dreams died. I thought having a boyfriend would change my life, that it would instantly give me adventure, that it would give me romance, but none of that materialized. Sure, there was the honeymoon period for awhile, but that was mostly the effect of endorphins from the thrill of the chase and the excitement of novelty, and those things don't last. I languished for 14 years on a dead end when I could have pursued something genuine. I cheated myself for 14 years, and I'll never get that time back. And besides the philosophical aspect, Yamacha physically cheated on me too...repeatedly," Bulma said, wrinkling her nose as she sniffed her drink, "the douchebag. But what am I babbling on about?"

Bulma directed herself towards him, with her eyes stormy and wet, yet somehow she could still see him clearly. "You definitely know what it's like to be cheated, haven't you been cheated your whole life?"

Vegeta seethed, so this was what this was about, the idiot's infidelity, and her lamenting the loss of whatever dismal relationship she had with him. Hadn't she banished the weakling earlier today, and she was still upset over it? He could never understand humans and their ability to exhaust themselves over superficial matters. He couldn't care less about her imaginary problems, especially when he had real ones to contend with. He disregarded the mention to his own life.

"This is what makes you cry?" he vented irately. "And you claim to be a smart woman."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean no sane person would waste a modicum of thought on that cancerous growth. Just be happy you got out before the sickness spread."

Bulma's eyes misted over once more, reminding Vegeta of past purges, where alien civilians would be flushed out from their underground bunkers with tear gas spray. She better not start crying in front of him, he thought with alarm.

But Bulma didn't cry again, with some part of her remembering whose company she was presently in, a man who would love to bathe in her tears, soaking himself in them until his skin raisined. She lapsed back to her plastic smile, that was really doing more harm than good to her fragile emotional state.

"Haha, you really despise Yamacha, don't you? You can lighten up", Bulma tittered, patting his knee, "you pretty much killed him once already. What's he going to do to you?"

Vegeta spaced himself away from her contact, taking a dulcifying gulp of his drink. "Nothing," he spat, "you cut ties with him so he won't be around to annoy me any more." He switched the question back to her. "So now what are you going to let him do to you?"

"Nothing," she asserted just as vehemently, her hand tightly gripping her glass. "I won't let him affect me. But now I'm back at the start, life at its beginning again." She ringed the top of her glass mindlessly. "It's just a circle with no end."

Vegeta felt her words eerily affecting him.

"But who else am I going to get to marry…, umm, date me, that I can bully and who can tolerate my bullshit? I may look like sugar and spice and everything nice, but I'm actually tart and poisonous and as cutting as ice."

"Hmph, who are these blind men that think you look nice? I always saw you as the shrill harpy that you are. If that's what you want, someone to bully, you can find someone better, someone who won't break so easily." Vegeta looked to her glass that he was surprised to see hadn't broken yet due to her strong hold upon it.

"Thanks Vegeta, you're actually cheering me up, in your curmudgeonly way."

Vegeta hadn't intended to reassure her, the words had just slipped out in his enthusiasm to deride the weakling. He polished off his drink rather timorously in response.

Bulma crossed one leg over the other across the coffee table, her stance was now completely relaxed, with her no longer looking like a cat with its claws at the ready. She pulled a cigarette from out of her scalloped bralet top, inhaling solemnly. She looked rather sensuous and detached, barely dressed and puffing away on her cigarette while the fireplace and the shadowy room created alternating bands of dark and light across her body.

"What are you smoking?" Vegeta asked fascinated, as he watched the grey smoke powder onto her body's black and white scenic art.

"A cigarette. Kami, I'm just like my papa, like father like daughter down to every last trait. Where is he anyways? And my mother too? They should be here to console me in my time of need." She fired the cigarette into an ashtray.

"And why do you smoke? Because it helps me relieve stress, because it helps me feel something when everything else is numb, because I constantly need to keep my hands occupied and if I'm not building something, this is a good substitute," she explained.

Vegeta nabbed her cigarette from out of the ashtray and took a long drag.

"Vegeta! You shouldn't do that, not if you want to maintain your athletic physique."

Vegeta grimaced, before crushing the cigarette out against the table top. "That is absolutely foul. That won't solve any of your problems."

"Ahh, you're right, but each puff is like a taste of a possible solution."

"Don't light another one. Yes sir, but how about another drink instead?"

Vegeta wordlessly handed her his glass.

"Kanpai Vegeta," Bulma started, waiting for him to respond.

Vegeta slowly raised his glass to her, and Bulma startled him by clinking their glasses together.

"Let's play a game Vegeta. Let's begin with the No Laughing game. It's really easy, all you have to do is not laugh despite my attempts to make you do so, and if you laugh, you take a drink."

Bulma got up and pulled a series of funny faces in front of him. Vegeta just shook his head at her impatiently, and Bulma couldn't stop herself from giggling maniacally.

"What's so funny?" Vegeta growled.

"It's just you always try to look so intimidating and it makes me laugh." Bulma swigged down more booze, "I need to top off my drink," she announced. Bulma poured herself another generous serving of alcohol, and as she headed back towards the couch, she tripped over the leg of the coffee table. Her drink spilled onto her tulip skirt and Vegeta guffawed. "Drink up, buddy, I heard that," she said as she tried to extract the whiskey from her skirt.

Bulma joined him back on the couch and stared moodily at her drink. "Vegeta, do you see the glass as half-empty or half-full?"

"Half-empty, what kind of question is that?"

"Of course, you would, you're such a pessimist."

"Why would I call it half-full when the liquid you have dispensed in it as never reached its rim? The way it is now, the glass has never been full, but it'll always revert to being empty, especially with the way you're guzzling that alcohol. The glass starts by being empty not by being full, that is its state of lowest potential."

"Wow, Vegeta, that's rather profound," Bulma applauded. "I didn't know you had that in you. You could have been a poet in another life."

"That's not poetry that's logic." He folded his arms crossly. "You know nothing about me."

"Ok, maybe a philosopher then. But you're right, I don't know much about you at all."

"And that's how it shall stay."

"Not if we play a different game, it's not too popular in these parts, but it could work with just two. It's called Never Have I Ever. I'll pose a question, and if you have ever engaged in the action described, you have to take a drink. I'll start, never have I ever fallen in love." Bulma slugged her tipple back, watching Vegeta remain completely impassive. "I would have been amazed if you of all people had ever been in love. I'll try coming up with something else,"...

As Bulma droned on with her idle chitchat, Vegeta concentrated on his drink, that warmed his belly and dampened his senses pleasingly. Just like the food, the beverages on Earth far exceeded what was available on other planets. Vegeta recalled the watery swill in taverns on the other side of the galaxy, where Raditz and Nappa would convince him to sup and recuperate in between missions. Raditz and Nappa, they were the only ones he had really conversed with, though that hadn't been by choice. He had loathed them, but they were still his subjects, the only ones who had known what it meant to be a Saiyan, and there had been some shallow camaraderie between them borne from shared circumstances and experiences. But they were long gone now, lost to the annals of time, along with all their castles in the sky that they would build from the whispers of dreams in taverns over drinks for the day when Freeza was no more. Everything was permanently on hold now...

Bulma squawked taking him away from the past. "Why do I keep losing? You haven't taken a single drink yet," she slurred. "You come up with something now."

Bulma was becoming increasingly sloppy, she would have no memories of their discussion tomorrow. In that case, why not play along? Her company tonight hadn't been entirely bad, and that was probably because the alcohol was making her into someone she wasn't, a less galling and coarse Earth woman. In remembrance, Vegeta stated, "Never have I ever massacred an entire population."

"Aww, that one just makes me sad though. You're not supposed to drink either," Bulma disallowed, knocking his hand away from his glass. But Vegeta found it all very amusing.

"I'll go again," Bulma's eyes sparkled sportively. "Never have I ever been killed."

"That's enough," Vegeta said savagely, cancelling their game.

Through the haze of drunkenness, Bulma immediately knew that she had said the wrong thing. "I'm sorry Vegeta," she backpedalled, "I should have been more sensitive." Bulma finally began to cry, her tears appealing for his forgiveness, with none of them spared for Yamacha. "Great, another man I've scared away because I'm broken and brash. Somehow I've even offended the man with no feelings."

Vegeta had never known how to deal with tears, they were such a futile weakness, that he definitely hadn't expected her to submit to again tonight. Why was he still here anyways? The 10 minutes he had allocated for her had ticked by into an hour already.

Vegeta marched towards the stairs, "Just go to sleep," he told her, with the malice tempered out of his voice.

Bulma clumsily clambered past him up the staircase, and turned around to face him. One of her hands was spread flat against the wall while the other pegged the bannister, effectively barring his way. "Don't be mad Vegeta, we were having a good time."

"I'm not mad," he snipped, "now move onna, or I'll move you myself."

Bulma moved, but she didn't move to clear a path, rather she moved right into him, where her breasts met his paralyzed body before the rest of her caught up. He could feel her nipples like pointed petals lancing him through her thin clothes, and she cuddled onto the stonewall of his chest, somehow looking completely restful there.

How much had Vegeta wanted to throttle her, to watch the last iota of life be extinguished from her eyes…And now she was the one clinging to him for dear life. It was so pitiful. Her hands bundled his shirt pleadingly, while her shapely body fit against his urgently like a forgotten, missing piece of himself.

"Get off me, you are drunk," Vegeta said, trying to shake her away.

Bulma intensified her hold on him while Vegeta stood woodenly like a cardboard cut-out. He didn't know what to do and he was becoming more and more uncomfortable. Bulma folded over against his thorax and Vegeta was hit with the entirety of her unabashed stereotypical femininity, where her princess airs were in a strop due to her mismanagement of her own affairs, where her deliberately weepy eyes were fishing for his validation and where her breath of candied liqueurs ran blustery over him. Her body was a warm lush blanket that he had the preposterous notion of wanting to wrap around himself. She was overpowering, and he thought he must have gotten drunk after all but then her drunken rambling was sobering.

Bulma sobbed into his chest, "It's just, I'm all alone and you're all alone, and the loneliness lasts forever. You don't have a soul in this world, but I could be there for you and you could be there for me, and we could cheat ourselves out of this loneliness."

Vegeta was finally able to unbarnacle her from himself and he jettisoned her, like she was just excess bulk that was weighing him down, across the steps. "What could you offer me that loneliness couldn't?" he sneered.

Bulma rose up like a wildflower shooting out from devil's grass, her renegade attitude was back with a vengeance. With one hand at her heart, and the other in between her legs, her lips sounded inaudibly, and he awaited her response with more interest than he should have. Her eyes searched provokingly into his and she scrunched the hand in between her legs. He was taken aback by her overt sexuality, but for reasons unknown, he couldn't turn away, he couldn't say he was repelled by it. But before she could continue, she stumbled over her words and over the stairs, falling into an unconscious heap in front of him.

Vegeta swerved around her, leaving her bedridden over the stairs and alone in her crapulence. When he walked past the second floor, he looked back down at her, too inebriated to even make it back to her own bed.

And Vegeta felt just then the depth of his loneliness, that he had never really considered before. And he saw her tears again, when he had made her cry, and he decided that he didn't like her sadness like he had thought he would. There they were, the only two living beings in that gigantic house, but only he was alone.

Vegeta backtracked and picked Bulma up testingly. When the gravity ship had exploded, she had brought him to safety when he had needed it, so he had a sudden urge to offset the balance that he owed her, and for once in his life, not to punish but to repay a good deed. She better blackout and not remember any of this tomorrow though. Her body from alcohol and emotion was a raging furnace, that warmed him up like a scotch hot toddy. She was so unapologetically alive, whereas he had only been half resurrected from death. Bulma would never be alone, there would always be someone there to come to her rescue. The irony that he was currently fulfilling that role. Bulma dry heaved as her head bobbed with his movements.

"You better not vomit on me. If you're going to spill anything on me it better be your entrails because you're dying, not because you're sick," he warned.

Vegeta carried her up to her room, roughly depositing her onto the floor. Even piled up, her body was still all curves, a figure 8 racetrack ready to be ridden upon. Somehow he didn't like seeing her all contorted like that, so he spread her out and lay her gently on her bed. Bulma immediately went into the fetal position, but she smiled straight at him, with her first genuine smile of the night.

The following morning Bulma awoke with her mouth fuzzy and dry and with a pounding headache. She hadn't had a hangover this extreme in years. Her room seemed to contract on her and the sunlight seeping through her curtains and the ill-defined sounds of activity from downstairs all had the alleviating effect of a hammer on an anvil.

She pulled her blanket over her head to block out everything, but her headache and thirst called to be relieved. Bulma shot her hand out from under the covers, scrabbling for the glass of water on her nightstand, but there was only her coffee mug that was filmed over with the remains of three day old coffee. There was nothing Bulma wanted to do less than to leave her bed when each movement was a gargantuan exercise, but in order to rehydrate she had no choice.

"Fucking Yamacha, this is all your fault," she muttered to herself, as she slowly lifted herself from her bed, shuffling towards her ensuite bathroom as the room spun in seasick waves around her.

In the bathroom, Bulma filled a glass with water and chugged it down, then had another and another. Satisfied that her body wasn't going to desiccate from reverse osmosis, Bulma turned on the faucet, splashing her face with water and frowned as her eyes were still reddened with the tell-tale signs of crying. It had been a slow burn over the past few years to realize that the torch she had once had for Yamacha had irremediably been put out, but once she had realized it, Yamacha had had the audacity to end things with a bang himself. His cheating had hit her with the force of a sudden gale on an otherwise temperate scene, and as she moped in front of the mirror, inspecting the size of her pores after a heavy night of drinking, she couldn't help but think that it was like Yamacha had blown out the candles on her birthday cake before she could even make a wish. That sleazy woman had crashed their party of two, although Yamacha would surely differ and argue that Vegeta had done it first, and you better believe that Bulma was going to cry and rage all she wanted over it.

As she swigged mouthwash, replacing the bittersweet aftertaste of alcohol and ashes with minty freshness, she tried to piece it all together. How had the night devolved into her becoming a wasted mess? I was drinking in the living room, I had a really nice buzz going and then Vegeta had to come barging in. That's right...Vegeta, somehow I manipulated him into keeping me company and he did it. He stayed, much longer than expected, and we chatted, maybe even had our first real conversation that wasn't just an argument. and it wasn't awful? But what did we possibly have to discuss? Her murky mind, suffering from alcohol-induced short term memory loss, couldn't pull last night's jumbled sentences into a cohesive dialogue. Damn, I wish that I remembered more. That was probably a once in a lifetime experience.

And in a thunderbolt, Bulma stopped her hand mid-way to her head, that held a comb to grapple with her gnarled afro that now resembled a dark and scary nesting place for small animals. I wasn't just crying over Yamacha, Bulma thought ashamed, I cried because of Vegeta too, and for really no reason at all, just because I thought I had offended him. How horrifically embarrassing.

Bulma had always presented herself to him as an unimpeachable front with a mean jibe or supercilious look always at the ready. Not only was that her natural reaction to Vegeta's irascibility, but she had known that if she had been weak, Vegeta would have taken advantage of her and everyone else at Capsule Corp. until they were his dutiful attendants at his constant beck and call.

Last night she had been weak. And he would punish her for it, maybe not with servitude but with humiliation. Or would he? Bulma thought confused.

Vegeta was a man who wouldn't permit weakness yet she had shown him weakness, and he hadn't balked or exploited it. In his own rudimentary way, he had almost comforted her? Bulma hadn't gotten back to her room on her own, not with the amount she had to drink. Had Vegeta brought her back here? Don't vomit on me, he had said something like that to her, and although it was far from a serenade, Bulma still felt some sort of whimsical uplift because despite that possibility he had still carried her to bed.

I guess none of us are really how we seem, me, Yamacha, or Vegeta. Did our public faces temporarily reveal something more truthful?

Bulma was pulling the teeth of her broken comb from out of her tangled hair. It's a new day, so maybe I should shed my old image and adopt a new one. I did shed Yamacha's dead weight, so why not continue the process? Bulma pretended to shorten her hair with her hands. I wonder how I'd look with a pixie cut or maybe even a widow's peak? She laughed heartily, momentarily forgetting her hurt and bruised pride.

"How do I look?" Bulma asked as she flounced her newly straightened and layered hair across her shoulders for Vegeta to see.

Vegeta peered distraitly at Bulma, not sure what he was supposed to be looking at. His only concern was that she was obstructing his passage yet again, this time to the kitchen and food.

"Well?" Bulma prompted impatiently, running her fingers through her hair, which unbeknownst to her gave Vegeta a strong whiff of hair products.

He crimped his nose and raised an eyebrow at her. "You look the same but smell terrible."

"Are all Saiyans blind to beauty? I wouldn't expect Son-kun to notice a thing like this, but you too Vegeta? I thought nothing got past the prince of all Saiyans. I got a haircut, you dweeb. It's symbolic, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. So do you like it?"

Vegeta looked at her sparingly, while in that big upward style she had sported before, he hadn't realized that Bulma's hair was so long. Her hair also appeared to be smoother and more silken. "What do I care about hair?" he said exasperated. Of all the topics in the world, of reign and conquest, of having a foreigner from a distant planet in her home, hair was what she was interested in?

"Not much judging by your porcupine head," she laughed, criticizing his thick quills.

If only those quills would stab her.

"You aren't stopping me from eating just because of hair. What is it you want Bulma?"

Bulma immediately stopped playing with her hair and looked down, with a light pink tinge at the top of her cheeks. "Oh, this is hard for me to say."

Vegeta glared at her to make it quick.

"I...I just wanted to apologize for my behaviour last night. I was suffering from a catastrophic disappointment and upheaval. I wasn't myself."

"I noticed no difference in your behaviour. You always act hysterically."

"You think that was hysterical?! I'll show you hysterical," Bulma started but abruptly silenced herself when she realized that underneath his words, Vegeta was saying not to mention it, that he wasn't going to goad her with this information, that maybe he had been just as embarrassed as her?

"Alright. But I also wanted to thank you…," it was hard to continue as Vegeta's glare broadened,…"to thank you for not letting me drink alone and for bringing me back to bed."

Bulma wasn't supposed to remember any of that. But he shouldn't have bet against a veteran drinker like her from not experiencing drunken amnesia. "Save your thanks. I didn't do anything for you, I did it for me. I could do without all the screaming and recriminations when you woke up hungover downstairs. You'd somehow blame me that I got you drunk on purpose and for being so bad-mannered as to leave you passed out on the steps."

Talking to Vegeta now was like a salve on her wounds, even if he were as injurious as ever. That night something had changed between them. She couldn't remember it all but she felt closer to him now.

"Are you sure about that? How do I know that you weren't trying to get a gorgeous girl like me to be pliant and at your disposal?"

"What? I never, baka onna," Vegeta stuttered, then scowled when he heard Bulma laughing at him.

"Of course not, Prince Vegeta is a gallant man who is above such earthly deviations. Even if you could have done whatever you wanted to me and I was in no position to fight back."

Bulma beamed with a secretive little grin that was a bit too familiar. They should have been viciously arguing by now or have been far apart and stewing away in their anger, but she was joking with him, sober?

"Hn," he said, pushing past her and into the kitchen.

"No need to get all offended, you make it so easy."

Before Bulma left him to his solitary meal that he was warming in the microwave, she glanced back at him and his sorry plate of dry looking chicken. Some sort of frustration fizzed in her chest. It looked like Vegeta was eating prison food when all the culinary expertise of Capsule Corp.'s staff was at his disposal. He hadn't been joining her and her family for meals ever since his accident, electing to forsake regular eating habits for more training. But he couldn't just demand more of his body while malnourishing it.

She felt her foot get caught in a thicket of brambles while she paced in circles at the entrance to his maze. That scientific instinct to study and to acquaint herself with him, opened up in her again like freshly turned soil that was ready for spring planting. She had walked right into a way to get a foot forward inside him and to prove that she wasn't just an enemy, and it was through his stomach. All Saiyans were ruled by their hunger for battle and food.

"Why don't I get the chef to prepare you something to eat? He has a new recipe for okonomiyaki and it tastes delicious when it's hot."

Vegeta wondered if she were still drunk since she was acting so kindly to him. What was her deal? But why not eat the meal that the chef would provide? He had enough of reheating leftovers and a meal straight from the pan would be welcome, even if he had to dispel his suspicions about why Bulma was offering it to him in the first place. His stomach growled, loud enough for Bulma to hear as well, which finalized his decision.

"How long will it take to cook?" he asked grumpily, pleased that he was going to be served a better meal but also displeased that he was taking Bulma's suggestion.

"Not long," Bulma replied, as she pulled out a chair at a table for Vegeta to sit on, while she went to go find her family's personal chef. Vegeta sat down warily, only having the most nondescript of impressions that by having taken a seat just now, he was also offering her a seat at _his_ table.

But then his stomach growled again with a hunger so rife, that he was unsure how he had missed and suppressed it before, and as a result, he brought his chair closer to the table.

…

For three months now, Vegeta had been chased by a snake with two heads. The snake was waxy yellow with an enormous trunk that helixed up to a fleshy neck that then axially bifurcated into two heads that lay side by side. The snake was also bloodthirsty and with its twin eyes and forked tongues regarded Vegeta as a tasty mouthful as it lay in wait, camouflaged by its hostile habitat of whistling ki blasts.

However, even if Vegeta couldn't always see the snake, he knew it was there but he never knew if the snake would come out to play or stay in its pit to watch him. Sometimes the snake would make its move, wheeling in a golden disc around him until he was backed into a corner, a little mouse whose only purpose was to nourish those higher up in the food chain. But before the inevitable would occur, the snake would scavenge past him uninterested and go back into its pit until the next time. The snake liked to play with its food, it liked to scourge him again and again until he was begging to be eaten, better that than waiting forbearingly in the queue until his number was called for mastication. Only when their jaws would pretend to descend upon him could Vegeta see the details of their heads that were frilled with many small rhomboid scales that went down in a gold stripe. They stared at him with green vertical pupils and it was then that Vegeta would have the horrible sinking feeling of recognition.

The snake was the embodiment of a Super Saiyan and each head was for each exalted member, Kakarot and that boy from the future. And Vegeta would flee back into his mouse hole, wrongly not one of the chosen few.

Today was a different day though. Today the snake's hunger for the kill was evident. It raised its triangular heads and unfolded from its manifold of conformations as it circuited around him. The snake always knew how to find him. Vegeta believed the snake was deaf, but could perceive the cowardly vibration of his heart to fix on his location.

Kakarot and the boy from the future, the two Super Saiyans, with the quickest strike of any beast, who were now ready to strike him with unerring accuracy.

He could hear them hiss at him, "Weak, unworthy, a prince only in name not recognition."

But today was different for him too, Vegeta felt different, he felt strong. He would fight the snake back.

As the snake came to claim its bait, to make Vegeta disappear in its rapacious maw, Vegeta dodged their attack, swifter than their ascended eyes could see. Instead of Vegeta, the snake bit down on its own tail, and in its hunger, it couldn't stop itself from devouring itself from tail to head until there was nothing left.

And then the mouse roared.

With the dreaded serpent slain, Vegeta could finally see that all along the snake had had no fangs and no venom. The fearsome beast was actually harmless, an innocuous garter snake, whose bite would not even break his skin. It was an ouroboros, an eternal entity whose death signified the birth of a new order and the end of his despondency. A new snake would arise, and Vegeta's would be its only head.

Vegeta's fantastical vision tapered off. He was in the gravity chamber with two totaled drones at his feet. The drones had tried to attack him head-on from opposite ends but they had only collided and destroyed themselves.

And at the window of the ship, Vegeta saw it. He saw a vista of heaven within reach. Threads of gold were spun into his hair and flecks of teal streaked his dark eyes. His laughter, his joy were chilling. The dark prince was going to return. Vegeta had found within himself the ore he must refine for gold.

Over the past few months Bulma had completely healed. The mantle of hurt and betrayal that had been implanted deep in her chest had given way to her residual iron core, and she was light and free. Being separated from Yamacha, separated from his bloodless demands, his kvetching, his distrust and his boredom had made her see that life was much more agreeable without him.

She applied herself diligently to her projects, making more breakthroughs than she had ever before. It was a golden age for her productivity.

After that first night, Bulma hadn't cried over Yamacha, she hadn't even been morose again, she had just felt numb. The numbness was soon effaced by forgetfulness, and then she didn't even think about Yamacha at all. One month after their breakup, Bulma realized that Yamacha had inscribed her with nothing of permanence, not even a scar. Their 14 years together had left nothing for posterity, just memories that became more worn and figmental with each passing day. It was almost indecent how nonchalantly she recovered, but Bulma had always been a resilient woman.

The only caveat was the crippling loneliness that would sometimes overtake her, and the sneaking doubts that this was it, she had her chance for love, and now she was destined to be alone.

But even those doubts would be negated with just one sardonic salvo from Vegeta, which would distract her as they used riling words to best the other. He would never know it, but Vegeta with his inflexible demands that would need her immediate attention, kept her firmly in the present and away from roosting in the past and alternate scenarios of what-if.

Slowly, she discovered through the teaching hands of time and experience, that he wasn't really as bad as he seemed, and that she valued having some fighting animus in a man.

As she entered the kitchen, she saw Vegeta seated at the table with a cruel, self-satisfied smile curled around his lips. He still had a mien of meanness but there was something else there, something she had never seen on him before - happiness? It was strange enough that Vegeta had broken out into a genuine smile, not just his hallmark smug smirk.

She was floored again by the fact that he was rather handsome albeit still scary looking, and it was unfortunate that he disguised his attractiveness under such ugly defenses.

She stood in front of him, half-smiling back at him. "You look like the cat that got the cream."

Vegeta's head jerked up, unaware of her arrival, as his smile was erased in place of a glower.

Well, it was nice while it lasted.

"What's got you so pleased?" she persisted.

Vegeta closed his eyes, his smile returning and denting his preserved stoniness, a big toothy smile that took over his entire face. His tongue mashed the tips of his canines, relishing the sharpness as he savoured the taste of some forbidden insight. "I figured it out - the key to unlocking the Super Saiyan transformation."

He opened his eyes revealing the fanatical fervor within. "I will do it. It's mine," he drew out longingly, "soon, soon. By the end of the week I will have it."

Vegeta paused, his mouth gaping open like a fish's on land. With amazement and unease, he snapped his mouth shut with his scowl. The vein at his temple twinged alarmingly, he had divulged too much. What possessed him to tell her about his eminence and virtuosity? It wasn't for an Earthling to know. Vegeta was better than this, he jealously guarded his secrets. He didn't need Bulma running her mouth off to anyone that would listen about his ascension, least of all Kakarot, who would surely not rest on his laurels any more than he had been with Vegeta nipping at his heels.

Bulma had never learned much about Vegeta throughout his time at Capsule Corp., and for him to start with something so personal and important to him was earthshattering. And it was Bulma who now broke into a warm, genuine smile.

"I'm happy for you Vegeta. You must be so excited."

Vegeta still wore a murderous expression on his face as if her congratulatory message pained him.

"You know, you can't just become a Super Saiyan. You've got to look the part too. The only clothes you have are the ones I've bought for you and that ratty old armour that you wore every day for almost a year. Why don't I make you some new Saiyan armour to celebrate this new beginning?"

It was Bulma's turn to pause in confusion, she had never offered to make him anything before. Normally, it took rounds of threats and nagging to inspire her to build anything for him. What was possessing her into being so generous? Something inside of her, something altruistic, something companionable wanted to do it. And after already appealing to his second nature of food, she was going to appeal to his first nature of fighting, which would allow her to take another step further inside him.

Vegeta cocked a searching look at her. This was supposed to be about him and his accomplishments and she was steering the conversation back to herself. Everything had to be about her, she just had to involve herself in everything.

"No," he declined.

"No? You mean you want to strut around in that shabby gear? Come on," Bulma cajoled, "just let me do it. I've been dying to study your armour anyways. I could learn so much about exoteric textiles and materials science. So I won't be doing you a favour, you'll be doing me a favour."

Vegeta considered her proposal. To ascend in these rags, that wouldn't be right. He did need new armour, it just hadn't been his priority to demand it as of yet. Maybe Bulma was finally learning her place and anticipating his needs. Yes, new armour, he could accept that. He wasn't accepting help, it was just an exchange of goods and services. The products were her skills and inventions and the currency was his concession towards it.

He nodded curtly at her.

"Yay," Bulma cheered. "You'll be kicking yourself for not telling me to make it sooner. Come down to my lab tonight with the old armour, I need to use it as a template for the new one."

Bulma sauntered off, happy as well, she had been looking for a new challenge.

Outside of Bulma's lab, Vegeta loitered, with one hand holding his ramshackle armour through the hole in its chest. He wasn't sure why he was being so hesitant. He should have already gone into the lab, given her the armour and been done with it, their transaction complete. But that armour had been his funeral garb, what he had donned as the life was zapped out of him, as his slender hopes thickened into the tremendous fear and meaninglessness in his final moments. It was a personal item that had gravitas, even if he had tried his best to not saddle himself with sentimental things. Maybe he wouldn't give it to her, if Bulma were as clever as she liked to preach, creating a replicate armour would only be a minor inconvenience.

The intercom at the door to the lab blared out statically, "Vegeta, I can see you there on the security cameras. Why don't you just come in?"

There was a sound of hydraulics and the movement of heavy metal as the door to Bulma's lab shifted open. Bulma walked up to him, removing her safety goggles and electrical gloves. "You brought it," she said in greeting, as she pointed to his armour. "Let me take a look." Bulma held out her hand to him, as greedy as a child after sweets.

Vegeta had the impulse to cradle the armour closer to himself, but scolded himself that he was acting ridiculously, and with reckless abandon, carelessly threw the armour, the last vestige of his former life, into Bulma's waiting hands.

"Hmm, interesting," Bulma murmured, as she examined the armour, producing a small chisel from her work overalls that she used to take a micron thin slice of the ceramics.

"What are you doing?" Vegeta asked aghast. She was just skinning the last Saiyan armour he had left.

"I'm taking some samples. I need samples to analyze the armour's material. What's the problem? You wouldn't want this grubby thing back once you have the new armour."

"I suppose not," Vegeta reluctantly agreed, turning to leave.

"Whoa, not so fast, where do you think you're going? I need to take some measurements first."

Bulma went to her desk and returned with a measuring tape. There's no point in making you armour if I don't know your specific dimensions.

Oh, he supposed that was necessary. Even Freeza's scientists had taken his measurements and filed them away to the galactic database along with a number of other attributes that were characteristic to him and his species.

Vegeta removed his shirt, tossing it over the side of her desk. Freeza's scientists had always done their physical examinations with the minimal of clothing on their subjects so that they could observe every weak spot and reflex. He was expecting that she would apply electrodes and other sensory devices to him next.

Bulma's eyes widened, awed and speechless. There was a paragon of male physicality in front of her. Despite his numerous other flaws, she always appreciated how well-built and compact he was. Although, she didn't think she would have ever had permission to touch such a specimen.

"Get on with it, Bulma, I have other things to do today," Vegeta snapped, bringing her back to focus.

"Umm, Vegeta, I could have taken your measurements without you being shirtless, but it's ok, it shouldn't make any difference."

Vegeta looked down furiously, he wasn't putting on some X-rated show for her, this was just supposed to be like a clinical assessment. What a vulgar woman if her mind immediately went to those depraved depths.

Bulma started at his collar, applying the measuring tape around the base of his neck and Vegeta stilled. Bulma wrote a figure in the notebook on her desk and moved to his sleeve, measuring from the middle of his back, over the top of his shoulder and down towards the periphery of his arm.

Her touch was instantly aggravating, like a horde of hornets stinging all over him. It was tickling and he wanted to swat and squash her fingers away.

As Bulma moved to measuring his chest, her touch transformed into something else, it was rapid like the fluttering of hummingbird's wings and soft like brushstrokes on a painting, Vegeta wanted to lean into it instead of shirking away.

A muggy fog hung in the lab, and it was hot, a congested and thickening heat. Didn't Bulma have a climate-controlled workspace? Bulma cinched in the narrowest part of his waist with the tape. The room was depleted of oxygen and a gravitational field was crushing him. Vegeta didn't know that Bulma could alter the gravity in her lab.

"Relax your posture Vegeta," Bulma instructed, "breathe out."

Vegeta released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding, but in that hot room, there was nothing to breathe back in.

The tape was taking the circumference of the widest part of his hips. He felt so very bizarre. The armour was ostensibly to accentuate his appearance as a Super Saiyan. It would be a small asset to his pride that Bulma would provide. But once again, he was regretting telling her how close he was to his goal, for that one moment of exuberance on his part had cracked open a door which she had kicked wide open, where she was now preening his pride like a peacock and simultaneously ruffling his feathers.

"Just one more measurement Vegeta," Bulma announced. "Don't freak out, I'm not trying to come onto you or anything." She bent down measuring his inner leg from the lowest part of his crotch to his foot.

And Vegeta felt a briar-like sting originate not from her but from within himself, that would be enough to invoke an allergic reaction and to cover him in hives.

Vegeta was not the only one who felt that the room had gotten too hot. Although she was done her measurements, Bulma's fingers went back up to Vegeta's chest, exploring the unwieldy rugged masculine terrain and tiptoeing over the razor's edge to his heart. Her methodical fingers slowed against his arrythmatic heartbeat.

Vegeta's heart thumped like a frightened rabbit, the pressure cooker of the lab had cooked him until he was done.

With difficulty, Bulma pulled her fingers away from over Vegeta's heart, accidentally whisking his left nipple.

Vegeta held his breath again. What's happening? Why can't I breathe?

"I should be done the armour by the end of the week, the same time you've estimated it'll take you to ascend," Bulma said going back to her work bench.

His participation no longer required, Vegeta snatched his shirt from off her desk, using it as a substitute armour against her. As he strode out of the lab, composed on the outside but skittish on the inside, he felt that he had left more than just his armour with her.

…

Two warriors brawled; and the air was perforated with blood, flashing ki and punches amidst a backdrop of an imminent cataclysm. In this teeming world, Vegeta was paired against Freeza once more, and there was a stalemate, emperor and soldier finally evenly matched.

"Hohoho, Vegeta-san this is all for naught, I still have one more transformation left. What can you possibly do?"

"You are not the only one who's still harbouring a transformation," Vegeta pronounced with a smirk.

"You mean that big ape transformation? How pedestrian, how uninspired. Vegeta-san, you disappoint me," Freeza chastised him in a tone that was quiet yet forceful enough to be heard above the electrical discharge on the dying planet. "To make that your last resort, when an army of Saiyans, your father's army, couldn't use that against me."

Not that, but what you fear most," Vegeta said with his voice like bubbling acid, "what you knew a Saiyan would be capable of, why you exterminated us all. But I'm still here, the Prince of all Saiyans, the legendary Super Saiyan!"

"A Super Saiyan? My dear, Vegeta-san, you are too old to believe in fairy tales."

"Go transform, and I'll transform too, and then you'll see who's been living in a fairy tale."

Freeza's purple lips skewed into a prissy look of disgust. "There is only one legend here and that is me. Consider this one last kindness from me, a residual deference for all your years in my service. I'll show you my final form, I'll show you the face of god. I'll permit you to die by the hand of god, despite how undeserving you are, because I'd just like to make you cry again."

Vegeta powered up, the rage filling him to his brim, the years of stoppered resentment, frustration and anger finally being uncorked into his greatest triumph. His darkness was bleached by iridescent gold, that crested all around him but before his transformation could be completed, the engine driving his change sputtered and wheezed, gave its last dying breaths, and he went back to black.

No, no, no, this could not be, he thought in a panic. Haven't I done this before? That day in the gravity chamber, I saw it, I know I did. It was no trick of the light, I was becoming a Super Saiyan. I was not wrong, I saw that golden light come from within myself as rare and splendid as diamonds. But it didn't finish. I haven't achieved anything since then. The transformation never took hold. The rarest of diamonds slipped away as easily as sheets of graphite from my hands. I only thought I could do this, because I mined the belief from out of the deepest pits of my despair. What have I done? There's Freeza in his rarefied final form and here I am with nothing to show for myself except this faded sketch.

And this time, it was Freeza's turn to smirk. "My, my, Vegeta-san, it's just as I suspected. The prince has no clothes."

And before Vegeta could even think to defend himself, Freeza had beaten him to the ground and was trampling Vegeta under his cloven hoof. Freeza picked him off the ground by his neck with his mucous-covered tail, closing his airway, and Vegeta had no recourse. The wind was torn from his sails and his voyage was once again at an end.

That is until Freeza's amphibious tail transmuted into a simian hand. Freeza's death grip was replaced by an almost brotherly embrace.

Someone whispered into his ear, "Vegeta, just forfeit the match."

It was Kakarot. Kakarot was telling him to give up? Never in a million years would he lose to him.

He was gifted with a second wind, which he used to charge at Kakarot. Vegeta came at him tooth and nail, determined to kill the last of his race. But there had never been any fraternity among Saiyans.

Kakarot, that cunning third rate deflected all of his attacks with his childlike grace and imported blows upon Vegeta that were both slow and quick and yet still painful.

Vegeta proceeded in his attacks from a puerile, prideful appeal. His ki, curved like a sickle and sliced through Kakarot's head. Although Kakarot had been decapitated, his head regrew and multiplied like hydra heads. Some heads belonged to Kakarot and some to Freeza, but they all slandered him and terrorized him with strikes.

Vegeta was back on the ground, a fallen yew tree, who with no one to watch, had fallen without a sound.

Kakarot spoke to him with pity, "Just forfeit Vegeta. You know we are better."

But with his borrowed courage and resistance spangled across with weary chest, he would not give up. "Is that all you got? Freeza? Kakarot? I can take everything you throw at me."

They bombarded him with fists, kicks and energy and Vegeta was unable to retaliate. He was curled into a ball on the ground as they quashed him into oblivion. However, he had been right, he could take it all, he would not surrender. All that surrounded him was a miasma of determination and suffering. And then it stopped.

Bulma rapped on the door of the gravity chamber. "Vegeta, open up, I've got something for you." If only Vegeta could make things simple, and attend to her summoning at the outset and not turn everything into a big debacle. But that wasn't his modus operandi, it would take more than some angry knocking to get him to heed her call despite her bringing him a present.

Bulma held her replica of his Saiyan armor in her hands, that gleamed ivory with golden bands around the rib cage. Reproducing his armour had presented more of a challenge than she had anticipated. She had had to characterize the atomic structure of the alien material, shed light on the individual and combined chemical interactions and processes and find suitable substitutes for the compounds using materials found on Earth. She truly was a genius, because she had accomplished all that and more. Not only had Bulma accounted for the unusual elastic properties in the armour, but she had also improved on its strength, ductility, electrical resistivity and lustre.

As Bulma tapped her finger on the silicon carbide composite framework of the armour, she headed towards the hull of the ship where the power box of the gravitron was stationed. Bulma was going to shorten Vegeta's training for the time being, and she would force him to listen to her exposition on how she had constructed his new armour. A capsule was even in her pocket that contained X-ray crystallography images taken at different orientations that modeled the molecular structure of the armour, which she would use to illustrate her points throughout her treatise. After all that hard work, Bulma couldn't help wanting to explain it all to someone who wasn't her father or one of Capsule Corp.'s employees. So Vegeta had better listen up, and at the end, give her all the necessary plaudits before she'd hand the armour over.

As she passed one the portholes on the side of the ship, she looked in and saw Vegeta bent to his knees, his body bright with a coppery sheen. She thought he appeared that way from the red lights of the gravity chamber, but upon closer inspection, the red was from his body being robed in a hide of his own blood.

"What the...?" Bulma murmured as she peered in even closer. One of the humanoid robots she had engineered, was attacking Vegeta over and over again, while Vegeta remained locked in his staid position, not bothering to retaliate.

"Vegeta?!" Bulma screamed, as she beat her hand down onto the emergency shutdown button.

At her first calls to him, Bulma's voice was just a mild breeze, that made his sails go taut, but did not remove him from his reprisal of the events on Namek. It was only when the gravity returned to normal, that Vegeta saw that the figures of Kakarot and Freeza that had been persecuting him were only the humanoid robot and their many heads were just circling drones.

He was brought back to solid earth from Bulma's cries that split through him like a spear.

"Vegeta, what the fuck is going on here?"

So she too had seen him suffer without a fight, as a once valuable tool turned dull and obsolete.

"Why were you taking so many heavy hits like that without doing anything back?"

Vegeta zeroed in on her. "You think that I'm too weak to withstand it? What do you know about my strength? You don't understand the boost I receive upon being beaten to the point of death. Leave now and don't disrupt my training again."

"Baka," Bulma said through her teeth, "I know nothing good will come from what you're inflicting upon yourself." Vegeta was never quite so angry as when she came to his aid. She observed him anxiously, her eyes large with dismay. It was like he was deliberately heading down the wrong path to his doom.

"Why are you so self-destructive?"

"I know I can take it." He turned on her, with his question just as poignant. "Why do you have no self-preservation? You should know better than to question me!"

Bulma watched Vegeta shaking with rage, his eyes darting back and forth as quick as liquid mercury. But mercury was the weakest metal, and Bulma understood then that Vegeta was just trying to prove to himself that he was still powerful in his native state.

"No one said you couldn't take it," she said more gently. "But you're not going to achieve anything by killing yourself. Go get yourself cleaned up and take a break."

"I can't. I have training to do."

"You need to learn how to train effectively and efficiently and to balance training with rest. The recovery process is just as important as beating yourself half to death. Look at you, there's nothing left in your tank. You need time to heal. Even Son-kun knows when to have downtime, and his fighting skills haven't suffered because of it. And Kami forbid, Vegeta, I don't want you having another accident."

How dare she bring that up? How dare she utter Kakarot's name to him and compare their training methods? The water of his mouth flooded the border of his teeth, and as he admonished her, Bulma saw dark blood congealing on his lips.

"You silly woman, I should kill you for such insolence. No one asked for your opinion. Now leave before I make you leave." He fired his ki towards her, in a bolus of heat, that refracted the air around her into wavy lines. His blast just barely missed her, only catching the ends of her hair and charring the tips before dissipating into the heat-absorbent walls of the chamber.

Bulma regarded her freshly trimmed hair, furious with him yet drawn to the fact that Vegeta had cut it so uniformly. "Go ahead, go kill yourself, see if I care," she declared as she stomped off.

"Leave the armour," Vegeta ordered coldly.

Her aggravation relented back into anxiety, as she gave one final look towards Vegeta's body still festooned across the floor, his tawny skin lachrymose with tears of sweat and blood.

"Just come take a break later, ok?" she said, depositing the armour onto the floor.

As the door to the chamber sealed shut, Vegeta reached for the armour. It was of excellent composition, Bulma had outdone herself. But why had she bothered to make him this at all? It was something beyond trying to annoy him. She was looking out for him, for his appearance, his safety, his pride. Had Bulma begun to care for him? Did she care for a murderer? Vegeta knew what this had to be about. What a dumb misguided woman she was, who was so codependent, who couldn't handle being alone, that she had to supplant him for Yamacha in her affections, him being the only man around that she had to latch onto.

But a niggling voice in his head spoke up and said, no one has ever made an effort with you before, no one has ever really cared. Vegeta remembered her sleeping dutifully beside him in the medical wing, and some offbeat and puzzling feeling washed over him. Further proof of her good will was the armour in his hand.

Vegeta pressed his fingers hard into the armour, but Bulma had done such a good job that the polymers stayed in place and did not deform under the pressure. He realized this was one possibility he just couldn't handle, it was one blow to the head too many. But in the grand scheme of things, why worry about what false beliefs she may hold? Far be it from me to unveil the inner workings of the female mind. I don't care what you do, what delusions you may have, provided that it continues to benefit me and you expect nothing in return.

As for him, there would be no breaks. He pulled the armour over his tattered shirt. This blunt instrument still had knives that had to be sharpened.

…

At the kitchen table, Bulma was fiddling with a recording medium that displayed a hologram. She improved the spatial resolution of the hologram by conforming the wavelength of the reference beam, and being satisfied with the encoded image, she directly used her hands on the hologram to fluctuate its position, pivoting it at 360 degrees and lengthening and shortening its size. She paused her modulations as the doors to the backyard slid open and Vegeta walked stiffly inside.

Neither of them had seen or spoken to the other since their last meeting had gone so awry, and Bulma was still miffed at him for so ungraciously repudiating her counsel. She peeped at him from under a fringe of lashes, intending to slap him a withering look, but desisted as she saw him decked out in his newly forged armour. And then she felt a lot less catty and much more amicable. Not caring if Vegeta was in one of his almost persistent mercurial moods, Bulma decided to engage him in conversation.

"What a change," she fawned as she turned off the holographic projection, "your armour turned out fabulously, if I do say so myself. You almost look dashing Vegeta. If I didn't know any better and if you weren't permanently grouchy, you could pass for a gentleman."

Vegeta registered her backhanded compliments with ill temper, the function of the armour was to upgrade his performance not his appearance. And it wasn't as if he didn't already look good all the time.

Bulma continued, "It's all due to my brilliant designs though, not only do I have an eye for science but for fashion as well. Only I could turn a frog into a prince."

A migraine began to bash at his temples. "Except I always was a prince," he muttered.

"Hmm, so what do you think? Do you like the armour?" Bulma asked, braiding a piece of hair around her finger.

"I won't know until it's been thoroughly tested in a real battle."

"You mean it's perfect," Bulma said, untwining the strand of hair that sprang back in a loose ringlet.

The hands of the clock that hanged on the wall opposite to the table struck the next hour, and a small green dragon capered forward from within the clock, emitting an imitation jet of fire before hurtling back inside. The interrupting clock now read 22:00. It was only 22:00...was Vegeta finished training already?

Past Vegeta and into the backyard, Bulma saw the gravity chamber completely shutdown, and everything around it was preternaturally quiet. As for Vegeta himself, there was a towel slung across his shoulders and he was now parting his gloves from his hands. It didn't appear as if he were going to workout again tonight. Was he retiring from training this early because of what she had said? Because she had suggested that to be promoted to the highest class of warriors he also had to assume some inactivity? It couldn't just be a coincidence that he was reducing his training from his usual 20 hours per day. She wasn't going to ask him to confirm this though. With any inquiries, she would probably drive him like a prodigal son back into his house of pain of 300 gs.

Bulma looked back at him discerningly, and saw him checking out her drink on the table. It was beer with a lime in the mouth of the bottle. "Would you like one Vegeta? It's a beer, I haven't seen you drink one yet, but I think you'll enjoy it. Nothing beats a nice cold beer after a long hard day, except for maybe a glass of vintage wine."

Bulma went to the fridge, taking out a bottle of beer and handing it to Vegeta. "Here, try it."

Vegeta reached for the beer, and as he did their fingers brushed against the glass. There was a sudden jolt and Vegeta could feel his synapses firing and his neurons transmitting signals. It was like he had accidentally touched a hot stove, and as dictated by the automatic nervous system, his outraged hand had the reflex to withdraw from the heat source. He had almost dropped the bottle, but had caught it bunglingly and now maintained its balance in his hand.

He sampled the beer, it was just common ale. It was funny how so many planets had fermented similar brews. The beer was a little sudsy and a little citric and he drank faster when he saw Bulma flexing the hand where their fingers had had a run-in.

That vertiginous feeling that had first visited him when she took his measurements, hit him again in the intestines. Then his beer was gone and he was just trying to ingest the bottled air. He turned to Bulma, "Another," he ordered.

"There's more in the fridge, help yourself."

Helping himself seemed best in this situation, he didn't want to chance their fingers touching again. He grabbed another beer and Bulma winced slightly as he popped the cap off with his molars.

They drank silently together, Bulma again working on her hologram, until Vegeta realized that he was still there, alone with her when he was against any such gathering. It was similar to that night of tipsy exchanges, when he had carried her back to her room, her body dead weight but still somehow warm and light, like a kindly hearth. He stalked off, leaving the empty bottles for her to clear, but he didn't head back outside, but further into the house and up the stairs to his room.

The next few days all proceeded similarly. Vegeta would complete his training ahead of time, long before the sun rose from its berth in the east. She wasn't sure how he budgeted his time without training. It didn't seem possible that he'd allot any of that time to recreation or renewal. Maybe he just simply slept or spent long hours occupied in thought while focused on empty space, becoming familiar with all the imperfections in the lacquered walls of her home. But what she could ascertain was that once he was ensconced in his room, the remainder of the night was his own and he didn't sneak back out to the vessel.

Sometimes she'd pass him by in the hallway, two ships in the night trying to veer off each other's course but somehow still almost colliding. And he'd bare his teeth, pointy and in the vespers of light, appearing as if there were several rows like a great white, as he glided past her as soundless as a shark at sea.

Bulma noticed that he didn't seem as tired, that his desolation had diminished and didn't stick to him with the stigma of a scarlet letter. The purplish bags of insomnia and burnout under his eyes began to recede and the grooved lines of consternation that sequenced into a staircase across his forehead relaxed. There was a youthfulness present in him that had never been there before. He was still so young, but his air of maturity and glacial hardness had never let her see him as her cohort rather than an elder.

Vegeta had reasoned to himself that he was already following a more intensified version of Kakarot's gravity simulation training, so why not take that further and test out on a trial basis whether regular breaks would lead to bigger gains? If it was good enough for Kakarot, it was more than good enough for him. And honestly, he was so exhausted, he could have a lifetime of rest and still be broken-down.

Bulma was prone to introspection, liking to just stare into the night sky on the large second floor balcony, and she discovered that Vegeta was the same. It was busy season at the company, and her father had loaded her with more responsibilities, so the singleness of looking out at worlds where she was not a participant, where she had no duties lowered her stress levels.

As she finished her cigarette, turning to stub the butt out in an ashtray, she saw him at the furthest end of the balcony, staring up into space that was as mysterious as whatever lay in his mind. She didn't know how long he had been standing there.

His head that concealed a maze knotted from grey and white matter, and that cast smokeshows of roaming beasts from its centre, had now become too big for his body from the weight of his grandiose ideas, and bobbled on his overloaded neck as he stretched it calf-like to the sky.

What could Vegeta hope to find in the sky?

Each night she went out onto the balcony alone, but at some point she'd turn to its darkest corner and he'd be there entreating heavenwards, and there he'd remain even long after she'd gone inside to sleep. She wanted to ask him if after each black day that was darker than each of these nights, if he still longed for something black and barren? But words would breed misunderstandings that would just break their little peace and quiet.

One night she couldn't take a moment more of the insupportable silence that got denser with each night, as they stood not acknowledging each other on the balcony, with Bulma closest to the light of the house and with Vegeta closest to the darkened gardens.

"You can come closer," she invited, "you don't have to stay in the shadows."

He didn't move closer, he stayed rooted in place, but finally he looked at her, acknowledged her, and kept his face angled towards her, that shone in relief against the starlight.

With each successive night, she noticed though she had to be hawk-eyed, that one infinitesimal step at a time, Vegeta moved closer to her and away from his tenebrous hinterland.

Until it occurred that one night, as Bulma glimpsed him from out of the corner of her eyes as she usually did, that to her surprise, they were face to face. Vegeta had gone from being positioned below and watching the world above, to being in front of her, with no place to hide.

It so happened then that the sky that spawned so many storms, shut in on itself and Bulma understood why Vegeta didn't mind complete darkness. The light glowing from his impassioned eyeballs swamped the small paper lantern light that she had set up beside her and even the light pollution from West City.

Vegeta was done with looking upwards where his soul would be contesting with the gods. Rather with his own leaden light, he would stare this hell on Earth right in the face.

There was a frantic batting against the belfry of her heart, as they just stared at each other, and Bulma moved closer.

Vegeta lifted his arm, she almost expected him to embrace her, but he reached out for her unopened beer on the rail instead and then he went back inside, for once before her.

The next night, she waited, but he never came out.

…

It wasn't working, breaks did nothing to either curtail or assist his training. At first he had thought it had, but it was just a placebo effect. Why had he even listened to her? His skin was not sallow and his face was fuller, he determined as he pinched his fattened cheek. He had absconded his responsibility to himself with his lassitude. A warrior should look weathered, his body telling the story of his achievements, sacrifice and hard work. He'd immediately return to his own training mechanisms.

…

Bulma was on the veranda, drinking a red velvet latte as she observed the daily ritual of the day waning into night. The sunset today was unique, which was why she had stopped to admire it. The sun was dipping below the horizon in the west not with its normal burnt orange hue but in shades of rich carmine. The sky looks like dried blood, she mused.

She now associated blood with Vegeta, either from his monotonous reminders that he could fill oceans with the blood he had spilled across the universe or from having changed his used bandages after his incident in the gravity chamber.

Where was Vegeta today anyways? They had somehow gotten into the practice of taking their meals together, although he still only communicated with her via grunts and orders to fetch him something. But he hadn't been around for breakfast or lunch today, and an empty stomach just made for an even more cantankerous Vegeta. Maybe I should go check on him and bring him a snack?

Bulma glanced at the metal sphere of the gravity chamber, that was obscured under the crepuscular light. It was an absolute ghost town over there, though Vegeta never finished his training before sundown. What was going on? Meh, maybe Vegeta is finally taking that day off that I keep badgering him about. What am I saying? Vegeta taking a sabbatical from training? Yeah right.

Bulma stirred her coffee using her straw, which became grounded in a gunk of red velvet bits, cream and raspberry drizzle. This latte now looks like clotted blood too. All this blood symbolism imparted her with a nasty premonition.

She had never had any clairvoyant tendencies before, being of a more obtuse nature that based decisions upon scientific studies rather than hunches. But something intrinsic, maybe her woman's intuition, was broadcasting the same image of Vegeta hemorrhaging outside the gravity chamber and she was inclined to believe it. What if it were true and Vegeta's incapacitated, deteriorating by the second, but he's too proud to call for help and this compound is too large so that even if he tried, his calls would just go unheard?

"Hold on, Vegeta, I'm coming," she hollered.

Bulma's drink capsized down towards the pine wood deck as she ran towards the gravity chamber while the final claret drops from the sun dwindled into dusk.

Bulma didn't have to go far up the cobblestone path to the gravity ship before she tagged a hulking mass lumped supine over the ground as Vegeta's body. There was a route of bloody hand and footprints, leading from the gravity chamber to where Vegeta had collapsed. He must have trundled along until he fell when he continued going on hand and knee like a toddler. There was a vermilion river that channeled into the red begonias bordering the path whose fountainhead was from all directions of Vegeta's body due to the many cuts and contusions that he was afflicted with.

"Kami, no, don't say I'm too late."

Bulma dialled a number speedily into her phone, instructing nervously, "Medical team to Capsule 3 stat, man suffering from exsanguination, close to death or dead." The last word she could barely vocalize. "Just hurry."

"Vegeta, can you hear me? Are you still alive?"

Bulma bent down over him, and thumbed the smashed segments of his armour. "You broke your armour, you silly monkey," she squeaked.

She was amazed when he responded facilely, as if she had come out to summon him for something as inconsequential as afternoon tea and not to identify his injuries.

"I couldn't be more alive. I showed Kakarot, I killed him before he killed me."

Good, he could still speak unfettered, so his airway wasn't obstructed. Bulma removed the chest plate of his armour, cautiously so as not to cause further damage and palpated his body for signs of internal bleeding. His pulse was still regular but that was probably because of his superior Saiyan compensatory mechanisms, but circulatory failure would be coming fast. Vegeta was pale and ashen and what he had just uttered was obviously delusional, so he had an altered mental status too. It was just another thing to check off in a long list of symptoms.

"How did this even happen?" she asked trying to preoccupy him and to keep both of them calm.

"Everything at once," he responded dreamily.

"What do you mean? Do you mean the highest gravity setting, all the lasers and drones activated at once?"

"Banzai," Vegeta affirmed enthusiastically.

Bulma's voice trebled into a high falsetto, "Are you fucking kidding me? That's it, I'm putting parental controls on that machine, you're too much of a hazard to yourself. You were doing so well, you were finally learning how to relax, and then you had to go and do a thing like this. Oh Kami, what the hell is this now?" Bulma's fingers handled corrugated metal. "Vegeta, there's shrapnel embedded in your abdomen. There's nothing in the current design of the gravity chamber that should account for that...unless, baka, did you go behind my back and force my dad to make you drones that would set off cluster bombs again? You are banned from ever training again. Do you hear me? Banned."

Bulma pulled off her cashmere cardigan, folded it into quarters and applied it over Vegeta's worst chest wounds, hitting his pressure points and trying to staunch the flow of blood. "I can't believe I just ruined perfectly good cashmere for you. You owe me bigtime. And now what? There's a miniature geyser spritzing from your leg. Did you tear your femoral artery too, you idiot?"

Bulma unfixed her belt from her jeans, using it as a makeshift tourniquet around his leg.

Vegeta bayed from the pain of the snugly secured belt. "What are you doing?"

"Saving your life again, you selfish son of a bitch."

"But am I a Super Saiyan yet? I did it, right?"

"Yes," Bulma said, abetting his hallucinations, "you're the best Super Saiyan that ever lived."

"You little bitch, you speak falsehoods. You're lying, don't humour me, it'll be your turn to die next," he foamed as his bloody spittle blitzed her face.

Bulma used her sleeve to mop up the spittle from her cheek. "Gross, Vegeta, I'll tell you what state you're really in, you're in critical condition, you're experiencing hypovolemic shock. You'll die if I don't get you to the medical wing soon. Good thing that I had the foresight to have components of your blood put in storage."

"Is that all?" Vegeta's voice came out in a flat note of contented resignation. "Just let me die then."

"What?! Don't be so melodramatic, we'll mend your body and you'll be up and about and pissing me off in no time. Now zip it, stay still and you can lean on me if you'd like until help arrives."

Bulma looked back and forth over her shoulder. "Where are these doctors? I'm not paying them bags of cash for them to be this slow and only useful in pronouncing a time of death."

Vegeta's head had somehow made its way to Bulma's lap, and she was combing her fingers through his charcoal locks in a gentle massage.

Vegeta had started to feel light-headed, that must have been what was making him go so astray, since he had the crazy vision of Bulma in full Saiyan regalia, barking orders at troops and militia during a war while she tended to his wounds. That couldn't be correct.

"Bitch, make sure I don't end up with any more scars," he said to counterbalance the woozy notions in his head.

"Argh, your body is already riddled with scars, what's a couple more?"

Vegeta muttered indistinctly at her.

Bulma scratched her fingers lightly across his scalp, and Vegeta shivered, responding either to the blood loss or from the sensation she was giving him. "I know, I know, there's a special place in hell reserved for me courtesy of you."

Bulma rolled her eyes, as she saw a group of white coats approaching from the distance. "Finally, the doctors are here. Kami be praised, you're going to make it Vegeta."

Vegeta's eyes flitted open to a familiar scene. He was again demobilized under the scratchy linens of the hospital bed while fluids and air were being infused into him through various lines.

Off to the side, at the small antique desk, Bulma lay sideways using a large medical textbook as a pillow as she slept tranquilly. Months had passed since Vegeta had first found himself intubated in the medical wing, and yet here he was once more, no closer to becoming a Super Saiyan, but more injured than ever before, while that woman remained steadfast in her constant vigil.

But he had to continue to train, he must, the alternative was too unbearable. He ripped the tubes from his body and the oxygen mask from his face, as he painstakingly crawled out from the bed and onto the floor. Every fibre of his body groaned in protest, as he laboured on hand and knee towards the door. Vegeta scrambled until he was upright, and felt some of the tightly knitted stitches in his torso unseam, and he couldn't prevent himself from letting out a hacking wheeze. He fell back to his feet.

Bulma jumped in her seat at the sound of Vegeta's whooping cough, waking up with an immediate castigating look at him. "What are you doing? You need to heal, you idiot. Go back to bed now," she ordered.

Vegeta was desperate to heal, but he could only accomplish that by pushing himself to his limit under the stringent conditions of the gravity chamber not by lying fancy-free in bed.

"You again?!" he tried shouting but it came out sounding choked. "Go away."

"Yes it's me, I have you on suicide watch."

"You can leave now."

Vegeta plodded forward, and Bulma sighed, rushing over to him and lending him her support as she shepherded him from off the floor and back to his bed.

"Look what you did, you big lug." Bulma pointed to the bandage across his front, which now flowered red with blood. "Do you know how long it took to stitch you back up? And now I've got to do it all over again. Don't even think about moving."

Bulma went to one of the cupboards before she returned to the bed with a first aid kit. "Stay still."

She removed the bandage at his chest, cleaning at both the crusted and flowing blood before using a surgical thread and needle to sew in new sutures. "I'm not hurting you, am I?" she asked.

Vegeta scoffed, it was only a pinprick. The only thing she was hurting was his pride. "How long was I out for?"

"Three days."

"How did you know to find me?"

Bulma put down her needle, and looked at him thoughtfully, as if she were scanning him with her eyes for something that wasn't observable in the visible range of radiation. "I didn't. I just had a snapshot of the present imprinted on my mind, like some sort of candid camera that focused on and took photos only of you. I don't know how else to explain it, it certainly was weird. But I found you. And thanks to me, you got transfused, got surgery and got pumped full of drugs. You'll be fine tough guy, I wouldn't be able to say the same if you were just the average human."

Vegeta choked again with disbelief, and scanned Bulma carefully with his eyes, but discovered nothing out of the ordinary there.

With a skilled knot, Bulma tied the threads together, reclosing his wounds, while she also applied an antibiotic gel to his injuries and taped down a fresh dressing. "Can't you at least take it easy until you know that you won't bleed out everywhere?" Bulma dumped her gloves into the garbage bin and washed her hands at the sink. "There was so much blood Vegeta, I was scared. You really have to be more careful," she requested kindly.

Bulma looked back at him and Vegeta's head was bowed. She was reminded of that day, just like this one, where she had caught Vegeta ranting in his sleep and where his face had held no bullying pretension. That day in the medical wing was when she had changed her mind about him.

Bulma went back to the bed, flanking him, "Are you alright? You can tell me," she assured him.

In a voice very unlike his, that was mousy and small, he wavered, "I can't do it. I can't become a Super Saiyan."

And Bulma was scared for him again. "Why not?" she stuttered.

"Because I am weak," he finally confessed brittlely.

The image he had always projected to her of solidity, was now up close falling away to something as incorporeal as her hologram. But she could make his image be substantial again and make it concretely real, all she had to do was give him a sign that she was in solidarity with him.

"Vegeta, you are many things but weak isn't one of them. If you were weak, you wouldn't continue to struggle. Your perseverance makes you strong and it will pay off…"

Vegeta cut her off, "Then I don't want this _strength_. Rid me of this strength that only manages to emphasize my weakness."

"I can't and even if I could, I wouldn't for anything worth having, especially something as vaunted as a Super Saiyan, will almost destroy you in its acquisition. But when you succeed, that feeling will be worth more than anything, so I would never even try to take that from you. I say this from experience."

What could this pampered woman know about struggle?

"There have been so many times where I've failed in my inventions, where I've met a wall, but I've always found a way to scale over it. There's always a way, for you as well."

"Tch, _he_ didn't need to resort to anything. How come he could achieve it and I cannot?" Am I less talented? Am I less hard-working and motivated? Am I less of a Saiyan than him? he grieved inwardly.

"Son-kun's transformation was triggered by Kuririn's death by Freeza. It was a drastic response, you need to find your own trigger."

"I do not have such emotions to draw on," Vegeta said, although his voice was almost bursting from a dam of emotion.

"But you do, you are much more passionate than Son-kun. You just have to learn to harness that passion. It's not easy, but you've got so much stubborn grit that it'll happen. Don't get bogged down in comparisons either. Let me tell you about Son-kun, everything comes easily to him, friendship, adventure, opportunity, strength. Yes, he works hard but he's never truly struggled, never been faced with his own inadequacies and maybe that is due to his simple mind, that he doesn't see an obstacle as a stumbling block but rather as a pathway to something bigger and better, that prevents him from understanding what insecurity is. But you Vegeta, you don't have that luxury, not when you know without any naiveté that life is long, arduous and cruel. However, the long grind will always win over caprice. Anyways, you're a prince, you're supposed to undergo more trials and tribulations than, what do you call him? A low ranking Saiyan? And as a prince, it will be all the more monumental when you have attained your birthright, right? If you're going to be more extraordinary than Son-kun, it's going to take more work."

"Why couldn't you meddlesome humans have left me dead?"

"Because death grants you nothing you want or need. And you aren't completely terrible to have alive living here."

Bulma linked their hands together. "Let me help you Vegeta."

Him, accept help? He, who had never needed help before? Never. But isn't that why he had let her catch a glimpse of himself, as a cry for help? Was this why he was making a confession to her? For help? Something had to be seriously wrong and broken within him to plea for that, for him to think that confessing to her would give him absolution.

Her hands were cuffing him down imploringly. Vegeta shriveled away from her hold, scandalized. "I would never need help from the likes of you," he spat. He viewed her with the utmost distrust, then fastidiously examined his wrists to ensure that she had left no record of herself on him. "Besides, no one helps anyone for nothing."

Bulma sighed at his total rejection of her peace offering. But she also perceived all of his self-loathing and misery that had ingrained itself patently over the years, and her heart wrenched. Does Vegeta even know how to accept help? she wondered. Has he ever trusted or been comforted by another? Probably not. And that realization was remarkably sad for her, but she had to make him see that help was possible.

"But I do. Haven't you seen me?" Bulma boasted, puffing out her chest arrogantly, "I already have everything so I need nothing from you. My help won't cost you anything."

Vegeta laughed lowly with wanton disdain, sharing words of wisdom as if she were a child green to the world and its ways. "Never give anything freely."

"If that's what you want," Bulma replied, every bit the petulant child, "I'll demand a fee. And the price is your success."

Vegeta laughed dourly again. His eyes riveted to hers with condemnation. "Why?" he asked tortured.

He didn't have to elaborate, she knew what he was asking.

"Tell me the real reason," his voice cracked under such hushed decibels that Bulma had to shift over to be within earshot.

Taking inspiration from politicians who were so adept at disseminating their rhetoric, Bulma boomed out, hoping to be even half as eloquent, "For your fighting spirit. You must be in a living nightmare, but has your spirit ever been crushed?"

What an asinine question, his spirit had been crushed beyond recognition. Freeza had toyed with him, brought him to tears, along with humiliation and defeat in death, where having Kakarot bear witness only served to twist the knife in further. And Kakarot as a Super Saiyan and that boy from the future who lorded their power over him while he stood small, desperately grasping at the wisps of their success only to come up empty handed. Those were only the beginning too, he had had a lifetime of servitude to disintegrate his spirit. Even now, he was broken beside her. He felt just as helpless beside her as he had when Freeza had pummeled him to death as he had let her see his anguish.

She let that question linger, but his enduring silence meant he believed it had. So she answered for him. "It hasn't, not truly. Even at your lowest, you won't stop in your pursuit of the unattainable. In fact, you become more doggedly determined. I see that from you every day in your training. Something resides within you that won't abide reason or limits. For you the insurmountable must become surmountable, you cannot tolerate anything less. Even if you had stayed dead, Enma Daio could not have created a better hell than the torment in your head, that would have willed you to become stronger and somehow fight again."

Her eyes steeled and for once she seemed strong to him and she wasn't just a frivolous woman as she said, "If I were you, I'd act the same." I wouldn't let some Super Saiyan challenge stop me, no matter how against the odds it was. I guess we are sort of alike," she admitted in surprise to both him and herself. "I respect what you do, even if I don't always agree with it. And because of that, I want you to succeed," she ended.

Those taints on his being were invisible to her and she saw what he had now become blind to. It was only an uneven flickering light fueled by pride and determination but his spirit was ready to shine bright again. And just as scintillating, she saw something that had been buried deep inside herself for the first time. It was humbling to her ego, but it also gave her a sense of clarity and calm that hadn't been there since before Namek - and that was that she liked him, and wanted him even more and it had been that way for quite some time.

As shockwaves cannoned through her, Bulma wondered dumbfounded how she could just blatantly disregard all that she knew to be true about him in favour of what she only thought was possible but that didn't yet exist. Her head screamed at her that he was an evil man, and her heart retaliated that he could be a good man. But between good and evil, black and white, there was so much more to uncover with him. As Bulma sized him up, drinking him in like she never had before, he was beyond all of their preconceived prejudices, he was beautiful, such a beautifully tragic soul.

"You and me are nothing alike," Vegeta interrupted disgusted, subconsciously trying to subvert her partiality to him.

She cocked an eyebrow at him, "Aren't we?" Aren't you just as prideful and stubborn as me? Won't you feel the same burning need that I do? "I'll fight you on that."

Bulma placed her hand on his cheek, admiring his high cheekbones. He had the bone structure of a model, of a real prince. She turned his face towards her, so that he had no choice but to see and hear her address. "You will become a Super Saiyan, I know it and I'm never wrong."

His head bowed down again, but from his lowered gaze he gave her an upward glance, and just for a second, he realized she wasn't someone to look down on contemptuously, but someone to look up to in admiration.

She gripped his chin and used it to bring his face back up to her level. "Vegeta, what you desire, it's not a wish, it already exists, this enlightenment can be won, it's yours for the taking,"...she took his hand once again, "it's yours, so take what's rightfully yours."

Vegeta's face underwent the entire spectrum of emotions, from wanting to laugh crudely in her face, to wanting to scrape her every last skin cell from off of him, but all that ceased to be as he was hypnotized by the earnest openness of her eyes. The crystal glass panes of her eyes revealed the untarnished psyche within. And in those transparent crystal pools, he could also see a reflection of himself as Narcissus born again and not drowning in the troubled waters of vanity. Her eyes were an oath of open rebellion against all he had been and all he believed he could ever be. There was hope there for him, and may all the gods help him, he believed her. He believed every gossamer vow from out of her lying mouth.

She saw the storm behind his silence, and it was so exacting, the need to comfort him then, to show him that in a world pitted against him, she would always be there for him. Bulma invaded his personal space, she would not be able to breathe or moan without Vegeta knowing.

Vegeta squirmed, like a mistreated animal would against the first non-punitive hand, and his face was alight with rage. But this time, he did not push her away, instead he panted fight-or-flight against her encroaching lips.

Both of them waited, until Bulma could wait no more, and she brought her lips to his in a kiss that was barely there. It was swift and just the softest touch but it must have felt ponderously heavy to him as the rage in his face dissolved to bewilderment.

And Bulma felt that sadness again, as she wondered if this was the first kiss he had ever had or at least was it the first kiss that had no ulterior motive behind it? It probably was, she couldn't imagine Vegeta showing affection or allowing it to be given to him. Well, the first doesn't have to be the last.

She approached him once more and closed her eyes. She lightly kissed him again but didn't raise her mouth. She landed more butterfly kisses on him, then gradually kissed him a little harder and delicately cloaked her arms around his shoulders, as protective as angel wings.

Vegeta panicked, what was this crazy woman doing? Did she have a death wish to touch him so closely without permission? In his confusion, everything seemed to move in slow motion and all he became aware of were her lips lightly trespassing against his.

When she kissed him with more force, trying to pry open his compacted lips, he realized that he didn't dislike it. All of a sudden there was a feeling of being unburdened, as if her feather touch was lifting all the weight of his worries. There was a dull pool of some awoken, unknown feeling that started in his toes, strengthened in his loins, and rose in sparks above his chest.

She pulled away slowly again, assessing his reaction and saw the first buds of spring rising from the frost-bitten earth within him.

And Vegeta saw her bathed in light again, like some unholy belladonna doubling as a sacrificial lamb for the beasts within him, looking so innocent but so deadly at the same time. Consequently, he opened himself up to her, just a little, but just enough she that she could slip inside, advancing from the antechamber of his maze to the great hall inside him.

How strong the urge was then, the urge to kiss her back, it was stronger than the ki flowing through his veins.

He clutched her towards himself, applying more force than she had to his lips, so that her invisible angel feathers would fall out and decorate the bed in a halo around them. Vegeta opened his mouth tentatively against hers, just as careful as when he surveyed a new planet for conquering under Freeza's rule.

He did not know what to do at first, so he copied her motions. He moved his mouth slowly against hers, biting softly on her lower lip, tasting her mouth with his tongue, and she encouraged him, teasingly nibbling back on his lip, and dragging it towards her. It was a fumbling kiss, that was completely experimental for him and non-traditional for her, but completely unforgettable nonetheless for them both.

And Bulma rejoiced, because she now had proof that someone so hard could also be soft. Bulma regarded his acceptance of her kiss as a subtle acceptance of her help. They had reached a détente.

And before he knew it, he was kissing her of his own accord where his body was reacting before his mind. And when her tongue slipped velvet-smooth against his, that unknown feeling reverberated throughout his body and it wasn't bad, oh god no, it was good, great, intoxicating. However, it was more than he was accustomed to feeling, and he was brought back to reality with a hard thud by her viperous tongue.

What the hell was he doing? He couldn't stand this woman. He shoved her away from him as if she were one helping too many of a treacly treat, and bolted upright.

"I need to go train," Bulma heard him cry, as his back faced her, quickly going out of sight.

Bulma fell back onto the bed, her mind racing at light speed, Kami, she liked him even more now that she knew he was a great kisser. Bulma spotted a patch of blood, that was still wet against the white sheets. Their kiss must have broken another one of his stitches. The patch of blood glared at her like the loss of a maidenhead, like the loss of his cruel innocence. Bulma's fingers felt along her lips that were lost to paresthesia.

You can make me bleed Vegeta. You can take away my innocence.

Vegeta was back in his room, and the bandages on his arms began to fray as he shook. He must really be ill, he must have really injured himself badly this time. How else to explain how he could be so forgetful that he would forget himself? He did not kiss, not even for the kiss of death.

Occasionally, when he returned to Freeza's ship from a particularly grueling mission, there would be a woman waiting in his quarters for him. It was a way to reward him for a job well done. Vegeta had been annoyed at these intrusions, but one does not refuse a gift from Freeza. These nameless, faceless women would all try to pander to his ego, would say sweet nothings whose words did not reach their soulless eyes, and they would all try to kiss him. Their kisses would elicit nothing but revulsion, before he would turn them away from him, and move on to just fulfilling his pleasure.

Her kisses were not the same as theirs, he realized in dismay. He looked down, confirming what he had known but hadn't wanted to see. He had a budding erection, that had grown despite himself at her touch. He was turned on! What sorcery had this witch cast on him? So maybe she had a motive after all, she was not giving away anything freely, the penalty was to further humiliate him.


	4. A Little Game of Cat and Mouse

Disclaimer: If I actually owned Dragon Ball, it would be rated 18+.

 **Chapter 4 – A Little Game of Cat and Mouse**

A week had passed. It was morning as Bulma sauntered into the kitchen, stretching her arms high above her head as she gave an overstated yawn. Vegeta was already lodged at the table with his breakfast of natto miso soup.

"There you are Vegeta," Bulma greeted, "long time no see. You've just been sequestering yourself in the ship. Every time I go and check over there, the gravity is implemented non-stop, day and night."

During the intervening week, Bulma had had ample time to dissect that one revolutionary moment between her and Vegeta that had spontaneously created something startlingly complex from the most primitive of precursors under the most unlikely of circumstances. A genesis of friendship, succor and morale had been established between them. This new atmosphere was just percolating in a gaseous mixture that was ready to form stronger bonds and she felt like she had to be the catalyst for any further reactions. But would it be right to induce a chain of reactions with Vegeta, when his very nature was volatile and she had no way to predict what the end product would be?

Volatile? Bulma felt her lips buzz with the same pins and needles sensation as after their first kiss. It was very odd to feel that sort of analgesia in her lips be offset by something sharp, like she was just a doll being coerced by someone else's voodoo magic, and each thought of Vegeta's kiss was another pin of life in her world-weary subconscious. She felt like she was being controlled by fate. She had recapped their kiss so often that she had become an overstuffed pin cushion, but after a week of such acupuncture, she had no need for any more mental therapy. She had compiled her findings about that one rash action from herself and had come to some ground-breaking conclusions.

Yes, she really did like him.

For someone so smart maybe her feelings weren't altogether that sophisticated. Her initial realization hadn't arisen from the stress and the emotion of Vegeta's breakdown, it was truly a part of herself like some latent ability that had only now fully activated because Vegeta had needed her, had accepted her help.

Through trial and error, she could determine why she liked him, even though when she finally figured it out, she laughably had the image of Chi Chi in her mind giving her the lecture of a lifetime about her poor taste in men and poor decision making skills, which would make her reasoning slip away. Yet the words pride, ambition and most of all challenge rang across her synapses, pulsing up and down her spine until it entered her bloodstream, hit all her vital organs and settled in her marrow as something wholly hers.

She liked him.

But wasn't this the obvious outcome of her inviting him to live at her house in the first place? Wasn't this something she should have foreseen? Why were the most brilliant scientists always so blind to the answers right in front of them? Who was she to resist the stranger from the shadows, a trophy prince dangling right in front of her? This Saiyan who she had first regarded as a mortal enemy who was now teaching her the meaning of mortal longing.

She wanted him.

But what about Yamacha? Was he right about you? That you felt this way about Vegeta the entire time? Shouldn't you feel bad about replacing Yamacha with Vegeta? Her guilty conscience pipsqueaked up to her.

What about Yamacha? Her heart of sin argued back. It's been months since our break-up. Yamacha had his time in the sun, now it's time for shadow play.

Again volatile? That's what Vegeta was. And she just wanted to douse them both in petrol, light a match and set them both on fire. But she was getting ahead of herself, her spoiled heiress side getting in the way of her strategic side. She could win over Vegeta, just like he would win Super Saiyan, but she had to have the precision and patience of a surgeon performing complicated heart surgery. Would she be able to stick to that plan though?...

Bulma went to the freezer, taking a second to pause there, cool down and regroup. It had been a week since she had seen Vegeta and just one look at him and she was already this dazed? She removed some ice packs that she chucked across the table in front of him.

"Your muscles must be so sore, I doubt you've given yourself enough time to heal from your injuries. These can help, just apply them to any _inflamed_ areas."

Bulma had the notion of taking one of the ice packs and applying it to her own flushed forehead. Vegeta disregarded them, not looking up from his food. He hadn't looked at her at all since she had entered the kitchen, and something fluttered against her heart in despair.

"So why have you been so scarce?" Bulma asked as she pulled up a chair beside him. Her elbows leaned on the table while she buttressed her chin up with the rear of her hand, looking pensive.

Bulma sensed Vegeta's remoteness, he had retracted back into his impenetrable shell. But of course he would, distance was his natural state of being, she would be unbelievably naïve to think that a kiss from her would drastically change anything within him like it had for her.

She slouched further down on the table, drumming her fingers nervously across the surface. She peered at him slantedly, wanting to push him a little, to see if he had experienced any aftereffects from their kiss or if he were really back to being immune to her.

"Don't tell me a kiss from lil' ol' me scared off the mighty and terrifying Vegeta."

Bulma had highly rated the kisses she had shared with Vegeta, she might even be scheming about how to get some more. It wasn't any hard-wrought confession for her to admit that she was attracted to him, from his muscular physique, to the strength of his feverish heart beating in his chest, even down to the cute web of veins that spun thickly over his front whenever she annoyed him, like at the present time. However, despite her attraction, she didn't want to place an onus of expectation on him, to make him believe that they had initiated something that was unwanted by him. She only desired more if that were his desire too.

But first, before she could achieve more, she had to instill some sense of normalcy back into their interactions. It could be no coincidence that they had had no encounters for the past week, he must have intentionally prevented any chance meetings between them. But what did that mean? Was he disgusted, ashamed or maybe even traumatized by their kiss?

No, he had returned her kiss.

She remembered the manner in which he had clutched her to himself, like she was the essence of life, the source of all ki herself, that he had cautiously but then greedily drunken from, like a man dying of thirst…before he spat her out again. That had to mean something. And she clung to that undefined meaning like it was a raft over a raging sea of madness and rejection that he would surely make her navigate across before she'd reach his desert island shores.

But for now, there was only one way to return to their high-octane acquaintance, and it wasn't by apologizing or spelling out what had ensued. That might just disarm him more. Rather, Bulma had to treat him like she always did, by teasing him relentlessly. Maybe he'd realize that there was nothing was amiss and would tease her back.

Vegeta put down his bowl with a loud clatter, finally ready to confront her. This was not going how he would have liked. Time had passed and the courteous thing to do would be to not dwell on a point of contention.

"I was not scared," he corrected, "I've been training."

While Bulma stared, and teased him, Vegeta had been inert as a noble gas, unreactive to everything from her. The relief that flooded through him was immense, he wasn't as sick as he had thought, he had recovered and was not at the mercy of some Earth woman.

He had not wanted to entertain any replays of their kiss, but after long days in the ship, with each strenuous day bleeding unrecognizably into the next, and with his mind on high alert to protect himself from outside forces but wandering when it came to his subconscious, there had been sudden mental whiplashes from Bulma and her kisses that would make him fall to the floor of the gravity chamber, with the outside world and his inner struggle all crashing down upon him until he ceded back control inch by inch. So he had been forced to think about her, in little headaches here and there.

What had happened between them had been an anomaly acquired from Bulma taking advantage of a moment of weakness. That day after his second near-death experience, he had hit a proverbial rock bottom in his quest to become a Super Saiyan, and it was Bulma, who had leeched onto him, looking for blood while he was in his concussive state.

But despite how she had tried to divert him from his mission and confuse him, he had over the past week, crawled his way back up from the bowels of the Earth with broken nails and bloodied hands until he was reunited with darkness. For an entire week he hadn't left the ship, training there, showering there, sleeping there, even eating from the stockpile of vacuum-sealed tins of food in the small kitchenette.

However, one night, as the ship was swathed in complete darkness, a light went off in his head. Why was he punishing himself with this self-imposed exile in the ship? Capsule Corp. may be Bulma's house, but he had full-reign over it. Was an Earthling and her feeble kisses going to scare him away from a real meal, a good night's rest and the upkeep of his unaffected demeanour? If he had avoided her company, not that he admitted he had, it had been to avoid further exploitation.

Bizarrely, after her invigorating speech and kisses, he was now more motivated to become a Super Saiyan than ever before, and he had the belief that the feat would be his, it just wasn't the season to harvest it yet. Sure, Kakarot had become a Super Saiyan, but his growth was mutated; beefed up and injected with the stress hormones of watching his friend die. That was not the right feed with which to achieve the form. He would achieve the model form under the right timing and most ideal conditions as was becoming of the prince of all Saiyans.

But he didn't like Bulma, so there was no cause for trepidation. No, if anything, he hated her even more for trying to cheat him of his pride with her kisses in a moment of weakness. A moment of weakness, that's all it was.

Suddenly, he saw her staring at him so deeply without realizing she was doing it, as she twisted the edges of the ice packs on the table, biting down on her lip, with a slight violet tinge to the red there like a digit losing circulation. And he felt possessed, wracked by disease again, for he wanted to reach across the table for her and suck on her purple-tinted lips until he was sure that all the circulation there had been cut off by his mouth alone.

That's when he started to feel reactive and could no longer ignore her in front of him, he had to eliminate her from his system and presence yet again. But why was she even in this kitchen this early? It was only 06:45, which was much too early for an Earth princess to be gallivanting about. And with a glance as hard as frost, he ended her ideas about instigating a series of reactions with his blast of cold fission.

Bulma saw him watching her with those cold eyes that would not tolerate any attempts from her to defy him or his explanations. Those eyes though were just the surface, just the tips of his iceberg, when she knew the true titanic size, that glacier of complexity of feelings and processes just underneath. Vegeta wasn't going to push her back into the freezing cold of his hostile exterior, not when she had been in the heat of his embrace and the thick of his maze. No, she knew how to break the ice.

"Riiiiight," she said, "even though you've been perfectly capable for months now of juggling training, eating, sleeping and having the tiniest social interactions with the rest of us. But this week you can only manage training? You thought that I wouldn't notice that your bed hasn't been slept in all week? It's just a kiss Vegeta, relax, it's not like I'm asking you to marry me."

Vegeta's face blanched.

"Tee-hee, wouldn't that be the worst? You should be proud, you're a pretty good kisser and your lips are remarkably soft considering all the cutting things coming out of them."

Bulma wanted to further test him, to put him under extreme conditions and to see if she was what made him tick. The first law of motion stated that an object will stay at rest unless acted upon by an external force. Thank you, elementary physics, she recalled, you've always got my back and I can count on you to never lead me astray. I'll just apply the tried and tested first law on Vegeta. Let's see if he'll swerve off the path of uniform motion and crash into my arms instead with rippling velocity.

"You know," Bulma said evocatively as she kicked her chair aside and sashayed towards him, "if you're nice to me, maybe I'll even kiss you again."

Vegeta saw her come closer dressed in microshorts and a crop top. He could tell she wasn't wearing a bra. Her luscious larval lips that were layered with the pink slime that she called lipstick, smiled at him, and his body fidgeted. Why was he reacting to her?

Bulma saw his icy façade splinter. So he did want her on some level, if he didn't he wouldn't react like that to her. He just couldn't admit it to himself at the moment. "But you have been good, haven't you?" she warbled as put her hands from behind on Vegeta's shoulders, massaging them slightly.

He was suddenly grateful for the table serving as a barrier between his lower half and her. Not again, he cursed inwardly. What was going on? No reaction was quickly turning into a reaction that reached 100% completion and theoretical yield.

"You haven't ordered me around, broken the gravity chamber, or even threatened to kill anyone in over a week. That's like model citizen behaviour. I think that merits a little kiss, so come here tough guy and claim your prize."

She tried turning his rigid face towards her, but Vegeta lurched away from her.

"Who wants a kiss from the likes of you?" Vegeta retaliated anemically.

"Why, every man in existence. Oh, I get it," Bulma said conspiratorially. "You're shy, aren't you? Not many pretty eligible ladies out in deep space? I'll take it easy on you then."

Something coiled around Vegeta like chains, and he was powerless to move.

Bulma bent down and kissed his cheek with an exaggerated smack. She stood up half-way as if debating whether to kiss him again, while his head nested between her unbound breasts and her hand pet his thigh under the table, so close to his hardness.

"How's that?"

"Don't slobber on me again onna," he said, shoving her off him.

Bulma just decreased the distance between them again. The heat from Bulma's mouth torched against his skin and his balls were as heavy as stones used to drown a man.

"How about I just use my tongue instead?" She flicked her tongue at him suggestively. "You didn't really let me do that last time."

Bulma was the ball and chain locking him to the spot, and he was breathing as if

underwater, as he waited for her to do what she taunted. And he was falling, falling down, falling further down into the briny deep of her eyes, her arms were tied in a reef knot behind him like electric eels, and it was either sink or swim. He desperately wanted to swim for safety, and to breathe fresh air again on his own in contrast to the recycled air that he'd steal from her in a kiss. If he swam away, he'd leave those sea slug lips behind to shrivel from the salty sting of his rejection. But he couldn't, he had forgotten how to swim. Instead, some untamed part of him screamed for her to do it, to continue this piracy of his freewill and to bring him down to no man's land.

She was venturing into dangerous territory, it wasn't just teasing anymore, she really was going to kiss him again, even if it might be too soon and would scare him off again. This wasn't part of her delicately concocted plans. But there was a chiming ring that was the deciding factor.

Bulma pulled her phone out of her pocket with vexation. Her lips drew back from his with a disgruntled huff. She had been so close that he could taste her disappointment along with the ferrous taste of blood in his mouth as he had bitten down on his tongue as she had pulled away.

"What?" she snapped into the receiver. "A gas leak in level B-3? I'll be right there."

Bulma hauled on her clean lab coat that she had left crumpled on the countertop. "Isn't this bad timing? I'd love to continue to torment you Vegeta, but work calls. But why don't you drop by the lab later? We still need to brainstorm ideas on how to enhance your training. I said that I would help you and I meant it. Even enemies can collaborate," she winked at him. "Until next time then, bye!" She blew a kiss out to him.

As she left, Vegeta watched her lips that were curved like a cupid's bow, that were flinging little kisses like arrows at him, that were as sharp and beautiful as thorns on a rose. Vegeta reached for one of the ice packs that Bulma had left behind and covered his crotch with it, that was the only _inflamed_ muscle he was concerned about.

When he had sufficiently recovered, Vegeta picked at his cold breakfast. A sound of destiny pealed through his ears with the beauty of a siren song.

"You will become a Super Saiyan. It's yours – _I'm yours_."

He pitched the bowl against the wall in anger, with the beige broth of the soup splattering across the kitchen being analogous to his own dirty thoughts. His body had responded to her again. He tried roughly calculating the statistical percentage of it happening again at random, then shook his head. If it happens twice, it's no longer an anomaly. When had she started becoming so attractive?

As he strode past the hallway mirror en route to the backyard, he did a double-take. Bulma had smeared his cheek with the seal of her lips from her lipstick. Vegeta furiously rubbed her kiss away, but he could still feel and see her lips on him, seeping into him like a port-wine stain. So Bulma thought she could tease him, that she could reap merriment from his one moment of weakness towards her? No, he had his own ace in the hole, she'd soon be paying him reparations.

Bulma had just had the most unproductive day while working in the lab, which had not been helped by her constant thoughts of almost kissing a certain Saiyan prince again. All of her new inventions were unviable. She had scoured her equations for a mistake but had found none, and she was ready to just ditch the project and redesign everything. What she needed now was to decompress. And what better way to do that than with some dessert followed by a bubble bath?

Earlier in the day, Bulma had seen her mother bring in trays piled high with manju buns. They were some of her favourite treats, and she knew they wouldn't last long with a hungry Saiyan on the loose. Bulma had taken a plastic container from the cupboard, where she had squirreled away some of the manju buns. In big block letters in both katakana and romaji, she wrote Bulma on the front before placing it back on the table. There, now she'd have some of the buns saved for later. No one would touch these. In the interim, she had scarfed down one the buns while heading back to her lab.

Bulma was back in the kitchen to fetch her snack as the water filled in her tub upstairs. Vegeta was once more installed at his seat at the kitchen table, wolfing down something or another. He didn't address her, or even lift his head at her approach, just like in the morning. But this time, Bulma wasn't up for another round of chicken, especially if it would only agitate her more and if it would only be her head on the chopping block.

Bulma scanned the table, now where had she put it? She moved a vase of flowers out of the way, but the table was empty. Who had taken her buns? They were going to pay, especially after the day she'd had and the foul mood she was in now. Bulma heard the crinkle of plastic coming from Vegeta's direction. She looked up and was livid at what she saw. Vegeta was eating the manju buns right from the container that she had labelled with her name.

"Can't you read Vegeta?"

"I'm not Kakarot," he retorted in between mouthfuls. "My literacy and numeracy weren't neglected."

"Then you must have vision problems. Otherwise you would have seen that that box has my name on it, B-U-L-M-A," she spelled out, "and do not eat," she said, tapping against the side of the container.

"I saw it."

"Why are you eating them then? They're mine, I was looking forward to having them now", she whined. "Weren't the hundred or so other buns enough for you?"

"I can eat whatever I want whenever I want, and if it's something that you were hoarding, even better," he intoned.

"You have no manners, you're such an ill-bred prince." She extended her hand to him, flapping it dramatically like pterodactyl wings. "Hand it over, there's still one left."

Vegeta appeared as if he were about to relinquish the container, but instead he smirked at her, before taking a large bite out of the last bun with relish, until there were only crumbs.

It took all her restraint to not slap the shit-eating grin from off his face. "Ughh, you are impossible. You're like a dog Vegeta, only motivated by food." Bulma went back to the cupboards and started to rifle through them. "Now I've got to find something else to munch on, jerk. Fucking fantastic, the cupboards have been ransacked, I can only assume that this is your doing."

"Your house is always lacking in provisions, you should know by now to stock up."

My mother isn't doing another grocery run until tomorrow." Bulma stretched up to the highest cupboard while on her tip-toes, "But maybe you didn't think to check here. It's not like you can reach," she gibed.

Bulma always kept an emergency stash of pocky and spicy seaweed behind the tea set. There was nothing there. Bulma even opened the top of the jade tea pot in the shape of Shenlong to confirm. Vegeta had pilfered from her rations yet again.

Bulma bashed her fist against the side of the cupboard, "I just need something sweet."

Bulma almost toppled to the floor, but managed to balance herself gawkily as she felt a warm arm snake around her waist from behind. It was Vegeta. When had he come over and why was he holding her?

Vegeta toured his nose up to her shoulder, inhaling deeply. Today Bulma smelled like cedarwood and smoky incense, they were earthy gamey scents of the hunt, compared to her usual floral notes. His nose journeyed across her shoulder blades before traipsing up the swan-like curve of her neck. His nose was rubbing against the veins of her neck, and each

vein felt as if it were going to rupture and spout out her blood.

Bulma ground her nails against the granite countertop.

"Bulma," Vegeta whispered into her ear, with his breath lingering at her neck.

Her hairs rose against her neck as soft and fragile as dandelion fluff. Vegeta blew against her neck, he blew her away with his hot breath until she was just a shuddering stem. Bulma wilted against him, she was a fawn trying to stay erect on wobbly legs. She hooked one hand onto the refrigerator handle, melting onto its solid cold door.

Vegeta pulled her hand back to the countertop, and banded her more securely against him. In a revelatory instant, he pondered over the strangeness of holding a foreign body in his hands. Bulma was not Saiyan. Her skin and muscles were not tough like freezer-burned meat. Her body was doughy and soft, not like a warrior's at all, but he wanted it nonetheless. He wanted to batter her body into a fine paste, work it into something strong, bend it back and forth, and when she was ready, frost her with his icing.

Without thinking, his hands cheekily reached for her own buns, and he began lightly kneading the dough, while she just became hot and cross. She tried to turn around and braid her legs around him, so that she could immerse herself in his delicious convective heat, but he smirked, turning her back, and leaving her for a second to cool with her front against the countertop even though she was nowhere even close to being done. Then he made his triumphant return, with his teeth pricking her neck, and a sort of whistling moan escaped her, indicating that she was at boiling point. And something from him started rising to the top against her back.

His lips were so tantalizingly close, how much better would it feel to have his lips at her neck instead? Bulma strained against him, turning her face, while Vegeta also angled his face towards her, until their noses touched. They both stared each other down, fixated on each other's lips in a silent duel. Vegeta bent closer, and his hair thistled against her skin, as he sanded down her resolve. Bulma puckered her lips and closed her eyes in eagerness.

Vegeta's hand opened her clenched ones, he noticed her knuckles had turned white from exertion. He deposited something into her hand, and Bulma squeezed it. There was a high-pitched plastic crunch.

Huh? What was that? Bulma reopened her eyes, and to her dismay, she saw Vegeta lounging collectedly in his chair, with one leg crossed over the other, back at the table. Bulma was still rocking on the balls of her feet, her head was pointed upwards, with her lips poised to kiss. She must have looked absolutely ridiculous.

Bulma's face reddened and she spun around to Vegeta, ready to peck him like a bird of prey. She was aware that she was still tightly clutching whatever he had transferred over to her hand. It was the container that she had used for her manju buns. The plastic was now contorted, with dips where the letters Land A had been, so now the word bum was spelled out instead of her name.

"What are you giving this to me for?"

"You asked for it back. What else was I going to give you? A kiss?" he mocked.

Oh, so he had just been baiting her this entire time, probably as a counterattack to her harassing him about wanting to kiss her again. You got me. You really got me good, you fiend.

"Here take this too." Vegeta threw a small package at her.

Bulma swiped at it, it was a package for one of her missing strawberry pockys. The package was already opened, and Vegeta had eaten most of them, but there was one stick of pocky remaining. Bulma smiled, she realized that Vegeta teasing her was his way of resetting everything to normal, to dispel the awkwardness. They were friends again...well, maybe not friends, but not enemies either. They were going to return to their squabbling. Game on, Bulma challenged.

Bulma took the last pocky from its wrapping. "Vegeta, do you want to play the pocky game? I know you don't know the rules, so I'll explain. We each place one end of the pocky in our mouths. Then we each take bites from our respective ends, until the pocky gets smaller and smaller, eventually our lips will kiss. You lose if you look away in embarrassment or if you let go of the stick." Bulma put the strawberry end of the pocky in her mouth, and the pink icing started to melt. She directed the other end at him, propositioning him. "Sounds like fun, doesn't it?"

"I'd rather share a bowl with a dog then risk swallowing any of your germs," he said repulsed.

"You're a bad sport, just try, maybe you'll win, maybe I'll let you win," Bulma offered with her eyes twinkling.

"What? Who would want to win? Losing sounds like the better option."

Vegeta swooped upon her so quickly that Bulma didn't have time to register that he had decided to play. The entire stick of pocky was plucked from her mouth intact and was being eaten by him.

"Hey," Bulma objected, "I didn't know you were playing, not fair."

"You lose. No candy for you," Vegeta taunted, tasting the end of the pocky that had been in her mouth, coated with her saliva that was sweeter than pure sugar. As Vegeta finished off the pocky, his teeth tingled with a high voltage as if he had bitten into metal instead of candy. His plan to regain the upper hand, to demonstrate to Bulma that it was really her who desired him and not the reverse, had just left him feeling more out of sorts. If he hadn't been so committed to repaying her for her perfidy, he would have kissed her. That realization did not inspire confidence. This was no longer just a game. Had he acquired some Earth-borne malady that was just setting in now? Or was Bulma with all her laboratory potions, spiking his food and drink to make him act against himself and to make her scent and neck be so mouth-watering to him? That had to be it, and to think, he had just accepted more food from straight out of the harlot's mouth. He was being stupid and careless.

Bulma's neck tingled where Vegeta's teeth had scraped against it. For the second time in less than a day they had almost kissed. Almost. She hated that word just then. Ever since their first kiss, she had looked at him differently, recognizing at last just how desirable Vegeta could be. But what to do about this undeniable attraction between them that had started immeasurably small but was now broadening uncontainably? I'll have to see how Vegeta responds as things develop, but as for me, I'm always up for an adventure. It's so difficult to be reserved though when passion expects an opposite reaction.

Bulma opened the door of the bathroom and the floor was flooded from the water overflowing from her bath. "Can't I prevent anything in my life from spilling over?" she sighed.

…

"Fix these and make them better this time." Vegeta rudely dumped the charred and unidentifiable remains of the bots right on top of the blueprints of a new hovercraft that she was poring over.

Bulma jumped up in fright, not accustomed to Vegeta intruding on her domain in the lab. A scowl superimposed over her features as the still smoking bots burned and curled the paper of her project. She staunched the barbecuing of her plans in one deft motion and looked up irritably at him. "Really, Vegeta?" She crinkled her nose at the bots and discarded them into her scrap metal receptacle. "I just repaired these for you this morning. This weaponry isn't designed to be binned after a single use only. I know you're a prince and all but there's really nothing wrong with training with something more than once or Kami forbid, training with the same bots for days in a row. I'm not some court munitions specialist that's going to outfit you in a new training ensemble every day."

"Make them more durable then," he clipped, not missing a beat, "you cut corners when you're focused on mass production of these things when you should be concentrating on making me something that's one of a kind and will last forever."

Bulma gritted her teeth, feeling a layer of enamel erode, "Everything I design is a Bulma original. What should I do to improve my inventions so that your training experience is satisfactory?" she asked sarcastically. "You must already have some ideas. Let them out, don't be coy in keeping them all to yourself. So what do you suggest? You didn't come all the way down to the lab just for repairs, otherwise you would have just left the bots all over the lawn like you usually do for me to pick up and salvage." Bulma nabbed a notepad and a pen, ready to scribble down in thick letters that would bleed through the page, whatever it was that he wanted.

Vegeta was half-turned like he was about to leave, but then the swiftness of his planned departure postponed into an unscheduled layover. Bulma furrowed her brow as she saw him almost intentionally dragging his feet, fussily readjusting his gloves and smoothing his shirt down for non-existent wrinkles. What was with all these delays? Was he stalling? But then she got the gist of his alien discourse and it was a sign language that she was becoming all too familiar with.

Their normal routine consisted of a demand for repairs, the process of rebuilding followed inevitably by more breaking. It was their classic rinse and repeat. But everything might just be a wash now. He was subjecting her to a new pre-conditioned treatment that was a little harsh at first but had some softness underneath. He was approaching her directly in her lab supposedly with another task that he was comfortable with. meaning bot repair, but by his active dawdling he was hoping that she would latch onto his subtle hint that he was granting her permission to help him in a more substantial way. She had offered to truly assist him in all his endeavours, but he was ultimately just too proud to cash in on his license of free aid from her. It wasn't in his practice to just accept handouts like that. But him standing there in front of her, right in her line of fire, meant that he was open to her charity and a makeover to their relations. And she wasn't going to shoot him down with verbiage but kill him with kindness instead.

She grinned a little sneakily as she realized that he must have destroyed those bots on purpose. "Vegeta," she said gently, with the upsell of a saleswoman's pitch, "I promised to help you and you finally came down to the labs, so just tell me what you need and it's yours." She had never volunteered to improve the bots for him before, finding it to be a mundane task that she did to the bare minimum but now she would devote herself to it if that's what he wished like it was her thesis to a grand unified theory of everything.

As the words it's yours retread from her lips, she was transported back to the dream filter of the hospital room where they had kissed under the softness of sepia tones, signing away their rights to one another and forming a binding pact of unity with their tongues as the pens and with their bodies as the parchment. Maybe Vegeta was having the same flashback for he quickly looked down to the floor with a rigidness to his jaw. After waiting a few seconds, Bulma joked, "Nothing to say? Cat got your tongue? How about I start? I am a genius but even my work could use more of a perfectionist's touch."

They negotiated together over schematics with ideas manifesting from herself like a stroke of divine inspiration, thanks to her venal muse to her left. Bulma was drafting plans for near sentient artificial intelligence that could progressively learn and adapt to Vegeta's techniques the more he trained with them. In addition, the new bots would magnify up to a thousand-fold the energy that Vegeta attacked them with by identifying the exact frequency of his ki, copying that frequency and then using resonance to amplify that power.

She was making a portfolio of sketches for his inventions, that were colour coded with felt-tipped pens and highlighters, with exclusions crossed out in thick black permanent marker. As she struck a line through a string of inoperable code, she noted that Vegeta had similarly been permanently struck out as the king that would never be with no hope of recapturing his fallen crown and that he himself was routinely running his pride through with red Xs of wounds in an unforgiving visual for having failed at becoming a Super Saiyan and for never making the grade. Vegeta had been coloured over thickly with black marker whose ink was only visible to those as criminally insane as him. She must have been able to decode his invisible ink since she painted herself with oil from remodeling the machinery of the gravity ship and glued herself crazily to the demands of his workload, just because she wanted to wipe that black mark covering him away. But this rigorous undertaking of restoring a once masterly artwork to its prime put her at ease without coating her in even a strip of grime.

Bulma was nattering away at him, her explanations about how these training gadgets would function spoken in scientific jargon that was as decipherable as tongue twisters to him. He contemplated how he had rationalized to himself how he could accept her so called no-frills attached bonus. Firstly, it wasn't begging for help on his part, no, it was more like he was accepting contraband towards something that shouldn't have been unconstitutional in the first place. Why was he prohibiting himself from profiting from all of Bulma's vast resources when she was freely giving it to him like she had it in an endless supply? Furthermore, Kakarot also had an open-door policy in this woman's life where her newest most beneficial inventions would always pass through his instant checkout first. How many times had Kakarot explicitly solicited this woman for help without a smidgen of pride to encumber him? From what Vegeta could count, Kakarot had benefited from her dragon radar, her spacecraft for Namek, a gravity ship, and who knew what else? Vegeta could do the same on a much more reduced level and the beauty of it was that he didn't even have to ask, Bulma was campaigning to do it herself. So he could be the coefficient to her variable assistance, not just an unruly overlord who only knew how to demand, but a collaborator towards his own progress.

As her pencil skated in figures over the page, her infectious enthusiasm over her work and the act of discovery, coaxed his glower into a more neighbourly look. They were co-conspirators in the bunker of her lab plotting towards his victory day and for the rest of humanity's dooms day. All these inventions that would facilitate his ascension were also dooms day devices because once he had achieved his goal, he would detonate the Earth and all her friends in a glorious fit of calamitous furore, and she had to know all this even if she had buried her good judgment six feet deep with denial, yet still she timed his bomb to self-destruct.

She was defiling all of her virtues, her loyalty towards Kakarot and the others, all of the purity of her world for him, for his sake, when it had been completely unearned by him, and that was a gift far better than his armour or bots, for he would only repay her with original sin, take away everything she had been and would be, and sentence her to hell with him. And did she deserve it? Yes, she deserved it for willingly helping him. Like Saiyan rulers past, once he had used her for all she was worth, he would kill her so that no one else would ever profit from her intelligence, and so that her help towards him would really be one of a kind. And somehow he was convinced that she had already considered all this, but was still willing to gamble her life and afterlife on a beast anyways. But why? He wasn't going to change his mind about her fate at his hand. Maybe she had deluded herself into believing that helping him was her contribution to the fight against the androids and that if she were merciful to him he would respond in kind. But that was still only a partial unsatisfactory explanation for why she was actively collaborating with his ideologies. It would have been easier for him to accept and understand if he had forced her into being a listless vessel of his needs, but no, she was in full possession of autonomy and by her autonomous rule she had chosen to help him. That was what had been so hard for him to accept and claim, the prize that she was aiding him not because he threatened her but because she truly wanted to do it.

He scrunched his eyes in confusion, suddenly feeling dizzy, as his hands gripped the back of her chair. Bulma continued to harangue him with her mathematical poesy and the pure unambiguity of her speech calmed his thoughts.

Almost accidentally, his hands drifted from her chair to the back of her head and his fingers tentatively brushed against her hair. He stroked her hair gently at first but then more fretfully, like a cat playing with string, with his fingers combing through the pin straight strands until they teased into small knots against his fingers. Her hair was luxuriously warm like sunbeams and with each curl of his hand, it was as if he could already feel gold shooting through his veins. He lowered himself and stretched like a tomcat over her, seeming as if he was going to fall into a relaxing snooze on top of her when he was actually being extremely vigilant. When he could no longer hear the scratching of her pen that sounded like rodents scuttling through the drywall nor see her drawing circular pictorials that resembled mouse droppings, his hands scampered longitudinally across her desk so that she was hemmed in her chair between his arms.

"I…I think that's enough for now," he heard Bulma exhale, as she swabbed the back of her head where his hand had been moments before.

"Make sure you give me a challenge this time, your work has been more than lacking on that front," he chastised.

Bulma tried to swivel her chair to get up and remove herself from the desk, so she could go to her work bench and begin construction, but found herself caged in by Vegeta's muscular arms. The loose-leaf papers she was holding fell clumsily to the floor along with her pen, that Vegeta could see bore fresh teeth-marks from her chewing on the tip. At his side, she looked at him from the corner of her eye, catching his profile. Her body was originally at an obtuse angle to him that became more acute until there were zero degrees of separation between her and the hexagonal solids of his ab muscles that stared at her in such fascination to measure their perfectly identical and symmetrical angles with a ruled edge. Bulma straightened from her chair, but his hands were still two metal tracks running parallel to her body like the bars in a jail cell.

She looked up bemused at her jailor. "Oh, I'll give you a challenge." She popped her collar, unbuttoning the top button of her blouse. "Let's see if you're up for my challenge."

It took Vegeta awhile to clue in to why she was staring at him so intently; it was because his arms were barring her way. His hands retired perpendicularly from her, so she could squeeze out from the desk. He was embarrassed, but to his credit she looked flustered too.

To distract from the awkward situation that he himself had instigated, he pointed towards a tangled pile of string on her desk, and asked, "What's all that string for?"

Bulma turned backwards to her desk, her hand that was midway to his chest, halted and grabbed the bundle of string. "It's just a small project I'm working on involving knot theory." She extended the string so that he could see the multitude of minor and major knots tied throughout it. "I've joined the ends of a piece of string together into countless knots that can't be easily undone. It's an intractable problem to untangle an impossible knot and to solve it, I'm required to come up with some sort of loophole or to think outside the box."

"Why don't you just cut it as a means to an end?"

"Oh no, the fun is in the process of untying and finding those ends on your own and I'd really like to make some advancements in this infant branch of mathematics."

"Yet it all amounts to the same thing whether you cut or unfasten it, so why not make it easier for yourself and just cut it?"

"Because that would be taking the easy way out and I'd rather riddle my way through this brain teaser and not break something that doesn't need to be broken. I can make this whole again and undivided, it'll just take some more unraveling." She reached into one of her desk drawers and pulled out another loop of string. "Here," she offered, "why don't you start with this one? The knots I'm detaching might be a little too advanced for you right now."

Without waiting for his approval, she infringed on his space, taking the string and passing four of his fingers through the untwisted loop before separating his hands.

"That is a lousy attempt to bind my hands if that's what you're trying to do."

"No, Vegeta," Bulma laughed, "this is a cat's cradle. It's a game." She directed his hands. "You play like this. You form various new patterns with the string until you reach a dead-end figure that can't be manipulated into anything else."

"I see no cat or a cradle," he said sulkily. All he could see were crossings of squares and triangles in the shape of Xs and Os.

"Well, you have to use your imagination," Bulma replied, her fingers smoothly weaving between his in a doublebind, and the small touch opened his mind.

He studied the string again and in the endless knot he saw the intertwining of wisdom and compassion to something weak, somewhat like complementary strands coming together that although unique on its own were now two of a kind. What was this messy cat's cradle he was getting himself into? He freed his hands from the string and her clutch, haughtily pronouncing, "I have no time for a children's game." He stepped back from her, adding, "While you're at it make me another ship too. I don't want a hand-me-down ship from Kakarot."

She placed her cat's cradle back to the disorganized clutter of her desk and chirped, "I'll add that to list. I've got to find time to make more armour for you too." She closed the distance between them and half-joking but with an undertone of seriousness, she asked, "So what about my payment?"

Vegeta glared at her. It was time to pay up of course. So much for getting a free pass with her. Everyone had their price and he would just have to see if he could afford hers. "What do you want?" he demanded brusquely.

Bulma smiled demurely at him. "Don't be all upset, you're the one who was adamant that I didn't give you anything for free." She pointed to her cheek, "So how about a kiss? Pucker up Saiyan."

"Tch," Vegeta dismissed, that was a lethal cost that he would not be paying upfront, and walked towards the exit of the lab. Bulma relaxed her lips. She would have to use a more wily method to collect her fee from him, but when it came to technological assistance, she would do that pro-boner, errr, pro-bono for him.

…

The sliding doors to the backyard opened and banged shut loudly. Bulma glanced from her stack of paperwork, and was met with the churlish face of Vegeta. "Why, isn't it Prince Charming," she gibed. "Come to take me away on your white horse?"

Vegeta didn't understand the reference as usual and didn't have time to puzzle over it. All he knew was that no one should mistake him for a charming man. "Enough of your drivel," he barked, "the gravity isn't being distributed evenly in the ship. The forcefield is condensed to only a few metres off the ground while the top of the chamber has Earth's normal gravitation."

"How peculiar," Bulma replied bored, "and what do you want me to do about it?"

"Do the only thing you're good for, fix it."

"Now that's not a very princely way of asking," she tutted as she tossed her pen onto a contract that she had been trying to decipher for the last hour. "It's your lucky day though, I'd rather be doing anything than finagling with these patent applications." She spread her arms across the kitchen table that was covered in papers and files, emphasizing her point. I'd even rather help you out. And how kind of you to only come to me for help nowadays, I like that you trust me enough to defer to my expertise, it's flattering."

Vegeta had an angry retort at the precipice of his lips, this wasn't about trust or expertise, it was a matter of convenience. She was an in and out black market that was stocked with every commodity without the lengthy wait time that accompanied shopping in her father's aisles. When he wanted something done fast and right enough, she was his go-to.

But Bulma must have noticed his rising ire and stamped it out by sighing, "Oh calm down, you grump, I'm letting you get your way without even putting up a fight, so no need to burst a blood vessel." Bulma grabbed her toolbox that she had slotted between two chairs and joined him at the door. "Lead the way, dear prince."

"Stop talking to me like that," he warned, ready to have his back darkening her sunny face, as he trudged across the lawn to the gravity chamber while Bulma followed.

They walked silently with Vegeta steadily increasing his gait to have Bulma out of his field of vision, but she would maddeningly always be stepping on his toes. Bulma didn't mind that she wasn't marching side by side with him, and at his stern, she had the enviable opportunity to admire his tight butt. It had been almost two weeks since he had courted her assistance in a new but no less humble capacity and until today he had breathed no complaints, so she revelled in the fact that her work was at another niveau of excellence.

However, although she had advanced in one respect with Vegeta she was stagnating everywhere else. Her romantic aspirations for her and Vegeta weren't even lukewarm but were at cold fish temperatures. She knew she would have to continue to be patient with him but she just wasn't sure how to proceed and even worse, she feared that things were reverting back to how they had been before in that dry and split-ended state where she would only get a blast of heat from his insults and not attraction. But they had still kissed; she knew it and she would remember it even if Vegeta was trying his best to forget and gloss over the truth. If only he were dragging her into the ship for a makeout session instead of more busy work though. She giggled at that idea while she eyefucked him, not watching her step as she entered the ship, and almost tripping on the ramp because of her daydreaming. She snickered more and Vegeta finally looked back at her exasperated.

Bulma switched back to her professional front and pushed Vegeta to the side of the ship. "You've done your part in bringing me here, you can let the pro manage this now. You just go stand pretty over there, while I fix this."

"What, stand pretty?" he sputtered outraged. "Or train, or whatever it is you do," she corrected.

Vegeta growled, but remained on the other side of the chamber as Bulma inspected the console and searched through the alarms list on the interface screen. She analyzed the source code of the gravity drive then tried to modify the program and was immediately walloped face-first onto the floor of the ship. Instead of debugging the program, Bulma had mistakenly activated the gravity, that was currently hovering around 3 gs, a level which was negligible for a Saiyan but was extremely taxing on a human such as herself. "A little help?" She grunted towards Vegeta, with no response. The gravity was bearing down on her, and from her splayed out position on the floor, her right arm wriggled up to the keyboard, where she struggled but eventually managed to delete her janky amendment.

Once the gravity had transitioned back to 1 g, she slowly got up, thoroughly inspecting the sore spots on her body, hoping that she wouldn't bruise. After confirming that she was still in mint condition, she whirled accusingly to Vegeta who predictably hadn't moved a muscle to help her. He was still on the opposite side of the chamber shadow boxing. "Hey Vegeta," she grumbled, "way to help a lady out, I thought princes were supposed to be chivalrous."

Vegeta hooked in her direction, and if she had been closer, his fist would have connected with her head. "Tch, for Saiyans, princes or not, it's everyone for themselves." She detected a smirk from beneath his hand that he had in a defensive stance against his mouth. "Didn't you tell me to let the pro handle it? I was not going to intrude on you being a professional fuckup."

Bulma was about to sucker punch him but she opted for playing the sympathy card instead. "I could have died, you know, then you would have been sorry for who would fix your precious gravity chamber?"

"Your father is still alive and well. And you didn't die, you aren't even hurt, so why are you whinging?"

"It still hurt a bit," she aggressively rebutted, "not everyone is made of steel like you. Some of us are still flesh and blood." She went back to the interface, scrolling through the errors again, until she uncovered the true cause of the disturbance. "Ahh, the gravity cable to the upper section is just disconnected. That's why you weren't noticing an increased gravity field around the ceiling. It's an easy fix, it shouldn't even take me 10 minutes."

"Then get to it," Vegeta ordered, now performing crunches on a thin gym mat on the floor of the ship, "and fix it. I haven't got all day."

"Hurry, hurry, hurry, everything's always urgent with you. Why the rush? It's not like you have a hot date to meet later tonight. You need to relax and live a little." Bulma buckled her tool-belt around her waist then approached Vegeta, who could already sense the dark energy of the favour she was about to ask him. "To restore the connection, I need to access the wiring that's contained in one of the ceiling panels. I don't have a ladder on me and even if I did, I don't want to risk falling and injuring my perfect body for the second time today."

Vegeta snorted dismissively at her vain self-assessment.

"So, you'll just have to fly me up to the ceiling," she said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Vegeta's exercises came to an abrupt end and he lay down on the mat unmoving. Absolutely not. The audacity of this woman, he thought. Carrying her around like he was her litter? That was a servant's job, it was definitely beneath him. And besides, he was not going to donate his time and energy for her.

Bulma came right to the foot of the mat and bent down ominously with her hands at her hips. "You want the gravity fixed or not?"

Vegeta was about to restart his crunches but he was paralyzed yet again as Bulma's hunched over pose was giving him a front row view of her enormous cleavage courtesy of her plunging keyhole dress. Vegeta kept his hands firmly crossed and behind his head for safety, yet they were trying to unfold and grab at her. He tried to regard her in coldly practical terms. They were just breasts, just gelatinous lipid stores, cumbersome and a hindrance in a fight, but on her, completely wondrous fruit ready for the picking.

"Don't be absurd," he said caving in ruefully, maybe it was best to just agree to get her chest out of his face. One day he would get her back for everything. He approached her crabbily, while Bulma readied herself right below the panel that she would need to investigate.

"Hurry up Vegeta and get over here, I haven't got all day," she said in mock imitation of his voice. "That's the spirit," she said brightly as he sidled up beside her. "Now be gentle, I'm a lady."

"You better be quick about this, or I'll drop you," he warned as he propelled them upwards.

"You wouldn't drop me," she said confidently, as he hovered them below the targeted panel. "Now shhh, I'm working."

Vegeta was indignant, she was always blathering on and now she was shushing him when he never had much to say to her? Vegeta was using the minimal hold it would require to keep her upright, which was only a few fingers scarcely around her waist.

Bulma stretched up, her head disappearing into the tangle of wires within the panel. "Aha, there's the loose cable, it's just a little out of reach."

As she did this, her dress started to hike up. The back of her thighs were right in his face, revealing a titillating hint of the spherical cheeks of her ass. And he was struck by the most insane thought, he wondered what colour her underwear was, all he had to do was lift his gaze and he would find out...his dick started to harden in anticipation. Should he look further or would he rather blind himself? He looked and he was blinded nonetheless. Her panties were flesh-coloured…but no clothing could so ravishingly imitate nudity, she was bare, on display, in the flesh. For someone whose entire family was named after underwear puns, she didn't seem partial to wearing the cursed garments much herself. His eyes shyly darted upwards to her most precious jewels, and it was beautiful treasure creating a sunken feeling of despondency in his chest. He was an undersea explorer diving towards her lovely conch with its hidden pink pearl and he saw her second set of lips sparkling luminously. He tore his eyes away from her nervously as he hardened hook line and sinker.

As a woeful distraction, his eyes travelled from her base and elevatored up her height until he was familiar with the entire clothed topology of her body from her special curvature to the flatland of her waist. The arrangement of her parts was expressed in a golden ratio of harmony and proportion for optimal irresistibility. By degrees, he had his eureka moment that Bulma was beyond three dimensions, infiltrating him in all of spacetime. He stared at the small knot holding up her dress and he was suddenly a strong advocate of her string theory. All it would take was one minor tug to undo the divide and to create an in, and her dress would separate revealing her own hidden figure that could manipulate him but could not be manipulated by anyone else. His hand shook at her neck, right at the string, but suddenly Bulma's legs kicked at him, almost as an admonishment, as she reached further into the panel.

At that unwelcome chastisement, he had the reflex to pull back, his fingers drawing away from her waist. Bulma almost slipped in his grasp but at the last second, Vegeta caught her roughly before she could plummet to the floor. Her dress floated back down like a life saving parachute to her knees. Bulma turned back sharply towards him, "Alright already, I'm going as fast as I can, no need to warn me by almost dropping me."

It took them both a second to realize the extremely incriminating position that they were in. In her near fall, Bulma had descended his body so that her ass was now at his crotch in the downward dog formation. And even worse, in comical fashion, his hands were keeping her balanced not at her waist but slapdash across her breasts. Her breasts netted in his palm were the catch of the day, and some instinct channeled through him to make it spawning time.

Bulma straightened herself back up, with her salmon dress moving upstream while his hands on her followed. She didn't flounder against him, there were no squeals about him being a pervert or any teasing about him secretly wanting her. She was as ungainly as a mermaid on land, her body was stiff and her legs were clapped together like fins. Her breaths and voice came out tinny, like she was using scuba gear and her hands were back in the panel, clutching at wires that were more like her support system instead of a problem she was trying to solve. Bulma shifted her body slightly, "You've almost got it...just a little more to the right," she sighed.

For Vegeta, it was a choice between rise over run, rise to the occasion or run away in shame? But his dick was already slanted at a steep slope against her back at an increasingly murderous incline and he decided to cliff dive into insanity. He recalled vaguely that weeks before his hands had brushed over her pert posterior in that clash over the buns so his hands were quick to immerse themselves in her heavenly harmonic solids, voyaging across the entire period of her breasts, until he settled right on the two foci of her nipples.

"Right there." Bulma buoyed him up, and he stood there lightly squeezing on the perfect spheres of her breasts morphing their shape in his hands until they looked elliptical. He felt as if he was making millions of revolutions around the sun at warp speed, which only accelerated when Bulma breathed, "You can hold me a little tighter too. I won't make you dirty."

He helped himself to her free for all. His hands swept across all her forbidden areas, crossing all her imaginary lines and hitting all her right angles. And at the end of his exploration, his hands returned to her two identical breasts that possessed the same eccentricity and as his fingers spiralled across the conic sections of her nipples, he could only remark on his own eccentric behaviour, his body full of arousal, his brain engaging in traitorous thoughts of kissing her again, of being inside her. No, no! Think of hatred, think of pride, he tried to reorient himself. It was a long minute caught in the trenches of his internal battle.

Remember to breath, Bulma reminded herself. Ever since Vegeta's hands had gone rogue, her body had entered a state of terminal desire where even her most basic functions were shutdown in place of lust. Breathe in, breathe out. Heart pump blood into the atriums and pump it out of the ventricles. Even if Vegeta's petting was occurring without his express approval and awareness, it proved that he really couldn't keep his hands off her. And it felt as if she were freewheeling between her lust and control. His sweeps through her hair had upgraded into her body being his launch pad. One one thousand, two one thousand…her breath was cut short and her heart skipped a beat, three one thousand…

Breathe in that oxygen, she repeated. Think about oxygen a molecule of life that is never found naturally as a single atom but is always covalently bonded as two atoms. But why am I thinking about oxygen again? Oh yes, as a reminder to breathe. Oxygen makes things burn. It's explosive under high pressure, like the pressure of Vegeta's hands.

Bulma had finished her task almost immediately, but she had not wanted Vegeta's groping to stop. Vegeta reached for her centre through her dress, and concentric waves of pleasure emanated from within her. She needed to come up for air. This had to end now. If he continued, she would not be able to prevent herself from jumping him. Although that was something she desperately wanted to do, her last trace of good judgment was telling her that this was not the proper time and that Vegeta was not yet ready. He had to want her enough to boldly go where no Saiyan of his rank had ever gone before. Finally, Bulma said sadly, "It's all fixed, you can put me down now Vegeta." Vegeta had them back to firm footing instantaneously, and she knew the spell was broken and he was back to basics. As a warning that she could curse him just as well as he cursed her, she slid down his body to the floor like it was the ladder to a fire escape and intentionally slipped and slid her ass against his firepole.

A five-fire alarm flashed in Vegeta's eyes as he felt her drive into his cock before he washed it away with some rapid blinks. In a masterclass of control, as she turned to face him, he vanquished his erection so that there was no physical evidence of how aroused he had been except for his watery eyes and the sunshower of sweat drenching his body.

She gave him a weird look. "Kami, what happened to you?" Bulma asked, playing dumb. Vegeta was not just going to pretend that he hadn't just been a conquistador across her entire body. "Vegeta, maybe you want to take a shower first before going back to training. You're sweating like crazy," Bulma said, covering her nose with one hand and fanning the air around her with the other. Her index finger nailed from the chandelier of muscles beneath his chest up to his chin leaving a dirty glistening trail behind it. He flinched. "Yeah, a nice cold shower is just what you need," she crooned, her gaze flickering from his torso to his shorts.

Just to be certain, Vegeta looked down to his crotch - nope, there was nothing to indicate how aroused he had just been so she had no means with which to attack him. "You could benefit from your own suggestion," he sneered, referring to the grease stains that had transferred to her hands from the wiring. The rest of his rebuttal died at the outset. Oh god, he realized, there was another blotch of grease smudged right between her breasts. The oil on her chest, akin his own black blood, was a Super Saiyan fuel that was fuelling further flirtation and desolation within him. It was the mark of the devil in disguise, looking oddly like the Saiyan crest. He had the mad urge to place his finger there and to wipe it off.

Vegeta felt himself stirring to life again. Damn, why couldn't this woman ever cover up?! "Cover up," he said scathingly.

"Why? I have the perfect body."

"A perfectly untrained body. Cover up your face too."

"With what? Makeup? Your kisses? Your cu…," she stopped herself.

"Try a burlap sack," he recommended, looking quickly at her. But it was an action he soon regretted, for he became trapped in the corners of her trapezoidal eyes. Turning rudely away from her so that he was separated from her by the most polar of coordinates, Vegeta resumed firing off punches in his training warm-up.

"Hmph, never a kind word or a thank you from you," Bulma muttered wearily, before stomping off. "Too bad you're such a jerk,"…she whispered the rest, "because you are so damn sexy." He was looking especially sexy all bathed in sweat. I wonder what it would taste like to lick off his sweat? Bulma giggled, I'll have to find out. But she could have a taste test now. She remembered that her index finger had cut through his sweat, and she popped her finger into her mouth, licking his sweat away. He tasted just like a blood orange that she promised herself she would soon juice down to the pulp.

Once she had left, he arched his head to look around to be sure that she was gone, even though he could no longer sense her weak ki signature. He wasn't taking a chance in letting the enemy detect any further weaknesses in him. There was no one else in the ship. He was alone again and there was nothing more blessed than the solitude enveloping him. Now he could punish his body and mind for their transgressions. Fifty thousand push-ups at 300 gs would be adequate rote work.

The gravity began to increase and he diligently focused on his punishment but around the 1000th push-up, as his body alternated up and down, his thoughts went on a complete tangent and he had the impressive image of her grease-stained and sweaty, pinned beneath him as pistoned in and out of her. His hard-on renewed and it lobbed against the floor of the gravity chamber as he lowered himself in the push-up. That friction projected another image of her becoming sweatier as she matched his thrusts. She would be feisty, he just knew it. In a lustful haze, he began to thrust in earnest, imagining himself on top of her as the numerator to her lowest common denominator where she would finally cancel out his constant indifference.

His reverie was disrupted by the mechanical voice of the gravity simulator, "300x gravity initiation complete," that was like a bucket of ice cold water over his head. "Argh," he cried out in frustration. He hadn't applied enough force to rid his mind of her. He marched back to the console and upped the gravity to its highest setting.

His fantasies had previously only involved battle and vengeance, and that was exactly how it should be in accordance with Saiyan norms. Never had Vegeta had a sexual fantasy; those matters were completely unworthy of his time. And to make it more discomfiting, his mind had chosen the most uncouth and common woman imaginable. This was unbecoming of a prince, a mortal strike against his pride. A Saiyan prince would never harbour such unsavoury inclinations towards a mere Earth woman, and a weak one at that. Why was this happening? How was this happening?

For the last two weeks, their interactions had slowed due to his intense training with his new toys. In that timeframe, he had fooled himself that his mind had been stripped clean of her like the removal of a scratchy label from a garment. He had separated himself from the original source of his consternation but it was too late now, and the underlying unrest that she had caused had just stayed dormant until he was back in her presence. As soon as he had been alone with her, what had he done? His hands had been all over her silky hide as if she were a large game he was preparing to skin and butcher. For completely different reasons unrelated to battle, he could no longer trust himself, he who always had known what to say to curry favour with Freeza that still left the impression of withering condescension, he who could swallow his contempt for his contemporaries just so he could live another day and play the long game. He had been outmaneuvered by a simple Earthling woman in revealing his most dangerous of desires. This was why trust didn't pay. And most depressingly of all, he could not justify to himself why he was suddenly so infatuated with her, it had just become another one of his perpetual sorrows one day without warning.

But he knew Bulma was cunning and crafty, maybe she had engineered this whole thing and most certainly could explain his sudden pathology. But no, no, this could not all be by her cruel design, she wanted him just as much, if not more, he would bet his ascension on it. When he had cupped her womanhood, he had felt a wetness through her dress that she could not fake. And he swelled with some small burst of elation, that just as soon as it began to take shape, popped like a lead balloon that left him just feeling heavy and empty and in the midst of disaster.

The maximum gravity finally took effect, with the robotic voice alerting, "Warning maximum gravity, 500 gs, proceed with extreme caution."

Vegeta was not listening, still hearing Bulma's voice echoing in his ears about where to touch her, so he took just one step and automatically nosedived into the floor of the ship with some of the tiles crumbling as a result. Vegeta struggled to move, each movement was a concentrated effort that came out sluggish. This would do though, there was nothing like struggling to stay alive to take your mind off distractions.

…

To Bulma's delight, after that rather forward act from Vegeta, instead of further isolating himself in the ship to gripe like she would have expected, he was a more active presence in the house and at meal times. Although, she could ignore that he only wore a pinched expression in her company like she was something malodorous that couldn't be eliminated from the air. Even if he had to forcibly endure her, the fact of the matter was that he was still there. Bulma played with the salt and pepper shakers on the kitchen table, smiling surreptitiously at the Saiyan sitting right across from her. But of course he was slowly coming into her orbit, she should have predicted as much from the universal law of gravitation. Vegeta was no longer stationary when it came to her, so the first law of motion was a fait accompli. She could move on to the second law now.

The second law stated that acceleration was produced when force was applied to an object…or in her case, subject. How much force would she need to make a stubborn Saiyan budge and to accelerate things with her? Despite Vegeta's increased visibility, there was still a level of defiance and a sense of considerable resistance associated with it. And the greater the mass of resistance from him the greater the amount of force she would have to apply in order to seduce him. That did not demotivate her for physics to the rescue again, a resultant force applied from her for a longer duration of time would generate a larger change in momentum and therefore, would create a greater _impulse_ in Vegeta to act. So Bulma would just have to keep pushing him with mounting force if she was going to make him give into his _impulses_. And lunch which should have been the time to break bread and not boundaries, was just another occasion for her to push him.

Vegeta looked up apprehensively from his bento box, as Bulma blatantly stared at him to the point of discomfort. The reason that he had been more present lately was because he did not want another repeat of that scene in the gravity ship. It was apparent to him in his confused state of mind and body in toiling to become a Super Saiyan, that his odious desires just laid in wait the longer he stayed away from her and that upon their eventual reunion, they would boil over the surface in spectacularly obscene fashion. The only shield against this would be if he familiarized himself with her until the point of contempt. Thus far though, he would admit that he was failing. The more he was around her, the more he wanted her, and he could only feel the pressure build in his closed vessel. And he was close to breaking point. Maybe it would only take a few more indiscreet well-placed pushes from her to achieve it. How she had been pushing him for the past week however, had been in a manner he was more accustomed to discounting. He felt dirty even acknowledging it, but she was trying to befriend him, by initiating all sorts of conversations with him. Usually, he relegated her squawking to background noise, but today she was pushing him in a new direction with a matter that he might just have to push out of her mind.

"Vegeta, what are other Saiyans like? I can't really use Son-kun as an example since he was raised here on Earth. Are they more like you?" As Bulma asked this, she bit on her lip, holding back an excited squeal, more hunky Saiyans like Vegeta? The seduction of just one of him was more than her poor body could take, imagine a bona fide orgy of Saiyans like Vegeta that she could welcome into her bed. Maybe it was by divine intervention that the Saiyan race had dwindled to just a few for the mental preservation of all womankind.

This was the impertinent push that Vegeta would just have to respond to. He would not allow someone of her lowly stature to ask questions about the legendary Saiyan race, like it was a hot topic of gossip. The first thing he would try to do was ignore her, and hopefully that would make her go away. But since when was that an effective strategy with coping with Bulma? That had never worked even once. He got a rude reminder of that fact.

"Hello, Vegeta, I'm taaalking to yoooouuu." Bulma snapped her fingers impatiently at him like he was some dog she was insisting should obey. "You're not daydreaming about me or something are you? Because buddy, dreams can come true, I'm already right here in front of you." She pouted, with her full lips looking extremely kissable. "It's not polite to not answer a lady's questions."

"Listen onna," Vegeta shouted, irritated at her pesky intrusiveness and that he was thinking about kissing her again, "it's not polite to ask questions about something that's none of your concern."

Bulma pouted even more. "Pardon me for wanting to know more about the man who's been living in my house for over a year. For all I know you could be some unhinged weirdo, or serial killer...oops," she said awkwardly, finally covering her mouth and finally Vegeta exhaled. "Alright, so I do know some things about you. But I'm just curious. I'm a scientist, it's in my nature to be inquisitive. Answer that one question and I'll leave you alone."

"You already know the answer." Vegeta caught her gaze with cold derision. "You met Raditz, didn't you? For all his faults, I'm sure he had enough sense to want to kill you just like I do."

"Oh him," Bulma said flightily, "I almost forgot about him, what with the revolving door of enemies in the past few years. He did want to kill me along with the rest of humanity. But Raditz was related to Son-kun, and that entire family is a bunch of kooks not representative of the lot. So tell me Vegeta, she bit her lip again, were the other Saiyans like you? What does a Saiyan such as you even like?"

She wrapped her arms around herself at that loaded question and Vegeta could see the outline of her bust yet again despite her wearing a high-necked shirt. Even with her body concealed, she still somehow managed to be an exhibitionist. He looked down at his lunch, concentrating on picking up single grains of rice with his chopsticks so that he wouldn't have to look at her curves. He shovelled the rice into his mouth. "Saiyans live to fight," he replied quickly between bites. That better shut her up.

Bulma rolled her eyes at him. "Come on, I already knew that one." He heard her nails scuttling across the table as her hand inched over to his to put his chopsticks down.

Her tone became sultrier, "What do you like Vegeta?" Her eyes met his, looking like they could swallow him whole into their sapphire unknown.

A grain of rice dribbled from his mouth, down his chin and to the table. The beating of his heart was at full volume, and he was sure he could hear hers too. "I like…I like quiet," he said thunderously, as he stepped angrily out of the room, almost overturning the table and leaving behind his half-eaten meal.

Bulma sighed, defeated once again. Maybe she had come on too strong. But for someone who liked quiet, he sure was loud. "Damn, why won't he just let me push his buttons?" Bulma said to the empty room. "Oh well, I'll try again at dinner," she shrugged, helping herself to his leftover sashimi.

'Saiyans like sex,' she imagined Vegeta grunting. Bulma was in her bed, revising the conversation that had occurred earlier between her and Vegeta, and her retelling had quickly taken a raunchy course.

'Can Saiyans fuck as well as they fight?' she'd eagerly ask.

And Vegeta would be on her quick as lightning, yanking her towards him, as he purred into her ear, 'For Saiyans, you may fight without fucking, but there's no fucking without fighting.'

As Bulma shucked off her underwear, she envisioned Vegeta using his teeth to do it instead and him having her pink frilly g-string hanging from his tongue. Bulma combined three of her fingers, assessing their size and estimating in her mind how it would compare to Vegeta's dick. It would be absolutely unacceptable to minimize the experience. If she wanted to be pretend that Vegeta was there, she would have to be realistic, and he would have a stout girth that would pillage her like she was a born again virgin. She jammed her fingers inside herself as far as they would extend, roughly sawing back and forth out of herself and cutting through all her restraints. Oh yes, he would be rough, he just didn't know any other way.

'If that's true, then you must know how to fuck me to death,' she would incite. Bulma continued to finger herself, interchanging between hard jabs and stroking her walls. Vegeta would pummel into her and that would just be the opening blow.

"Right there," she groaned, imagining Vegeta balls deep inside her with his hands anchored around her breasts like they were two life preservers.

'What are you doing to me, Vegeta?'

'I'm going to make you beg me for leniency, to spare your insignificant life,' he'd smirk from behind her.'

'You want me to beg?' Bulma would ask hotly, driving her ass higher up his torso so that she could take in more of his dick. 'Your wish is my command. I beg you to fuck me back to life.'

"Vegeta. Vegeta. VEGETA."

Meanwhile, Vegeta had just finished showering, and he was tucking his towel in neatly across his midsection, when he heard his name from afar.

"Vegeta."

It was Bulma's voice, somehow he could hear her though her room was a couple doors down. That couldn't be right.

"Vegeta."

Once more, was she really appealing to him like that? Not in her usual blaring octave, but with unbridled lust? What was going on over there? Vegeta fell onto his bed with his towel loosening.

"Vegeta," she cried, this time like a benediction.

He wondered why she was chanting his name, was she damning him for something that he had done? His cock twitched at that suggestion. Shocked at that bodily twitch, he jumped from the bed like it had been covered in bedbugs that were trying to crawl all over him, with his towel flying back towards the bathroom. His forehead vein enlarged, and his back hit the wall in his search for an emergency exit but he was trapped in his body's burning building of desire.

His dick was surging with excruciating pain, but it wasn't a pain he had ever known before. It was a pain that was on the cusp of pleasure, and it was every bit as violent as the pain that had been his constant brethren in the past. He didn't know how to handle it, to make it go away. He held down his dick that was jerking in all directions across his hand like a loose cannon and almost felt the need to pray.

He recklessly glued his ear to the wall so he could eavesdrop on Bulma's chorus of lust, and every vibration of sound that came from her lips and travelled across the walls to reach his ears made his entire body vibrate with forbidding inflammatory sexuality.

Back in Bulma's room, she was living out a recurring fantasy derived from a former recurring nightmare. She would be marooned on Namek again, in that solitary ridge between the mountains, trying to conceal herself from slaughter while also guarding her team's dragon balls.

But Vegeta would stumble upon her hideout and he would be for blood. He would see her surrounded by the dragon balls he had strove so hard to collect. And there she would be the guilty party, the thief caught red-handed. Vegeta's eyes would go white with rage, he would lose his pupils, while he circled her like a vulture after carrion meat.

'Don't kill me, don't kill me,' Bulma would plead, with her hands up. 'I'll show you how to find the remaining dragon balls.'

'I told your bald friend if there was any treachery that I would kill you, but I know just what to do with you,' Vegeta would remark sinisterly.

Vegeta would raise the hem of her dress up to her waist, assessing her body's worth, 'Up against the rocks and open up wide for me,' he'd command. 'It would be a pity to kill you without enjoying you first.'

Vegeta would rub himself against her entrance, ready to impale her in a death blow, when he would comment, 'Tsk, tsk, wet for your murderer?'

And Bulma would hang her head in shame at the downpour between her legs. Then he would indiscriminately take her by force, looting every advantageous feeling from out of her insides.

Near his climax, Bulma would clamp down on him, 'I've got your cock stuck inside me. I won't let you go and I won't let you come,' she promised, 'not unless you swear on your honour as a prince to let me go and to not kill me or my friends. It's a bargain deal and you won't have to pay the full price. You'll leave here with your balls and the dragon balls both intact.'

'As if you could stop me,' Vegeta would scoff. But he would feel her constrict all around his thickness, almost as if she had a dentured vagina with teeth blocking his exit.

And to make it an even more perilous conquest, Bulma would brandish a laser gun out of her dress pocket that she would focus right on his testicles. 'You can't come if I shoot your balls off.'

Vegeta would cackle before becoming stern. 'I swear I won't kill you, and I will come amidst your ravening cunt, but I shall make you come first.'

As sand would swoosh around them, and the earth under them would splinter, they would give themselves up for the other. Afterwards, Vegeta would effortlessly sweep the gun away that Bulma had kept pointed at his manhood throughout.

'Why'd you agree not to kill me if you could do that?' Bulma would sputter.

'I agreed so you wouldn't be too scared to come for me,' he'd explain while dusting himself off. 'Don't worry, I won't kill you just yet, not until I'm done enjoying you.'

'Maybe you should make me be afraid of you again,' Bulma would whisper, and Vegeta would shove himself back into her, his cock still dripping with his and her juices like a melting creamsicle.

And it was happening, the grand finale, where her fingers were enclosed between her undulating walls and caught between her own secondary teeth, as her lust gushed out of her. "Vegetaaa," she cried disjointedly, with the most powerful of orgasms striking her down.

As she came to, with the rolling credits of her orgasm at an end, she shifted herself to the untouched side of her bed and looked back across at the dark and sweaty outline of her body greased into the sheets that resembled some predatory alien arthropod. Her entire fantasy had just been a total sci-fi B-grade movie plot, and her mind was already lining up the next trashy installment. Bulma was absolutely ashamed of herself, what would everyone think if they knew that she was fantasizing about Vegeta at his most evil? Her only defense was that it was a such turn-on to think that he would want her even at his most genocidal. Soon the protestations of her friends dimmed away without conflict like cinema lights before a show, and her fingers pressed against her clit which was the start button to her double feature with her soundtrack on a constant loop, "Right there, Vegeta, Vegeta, Vegeta."

With just a few walls to separate them, Vegeta was regaling in his own private fantasy. 'You want to know what Saiyans like to do? Saiyans like to punish,' he imagined himself snarling.

The setting would be when Vegeta had first come to Earth where in a reversal of fate, him and Nappa would have decimated the Z-senshi. On the side of the road, adjacent to the fight, he'd find Bulma, nude and hog-tied, with a gag in her mouth.

'She was making too much noise as we murdered her friends, I just had to cover her mouth. But you don't see many like her around,' Nappa would whistle. 'I think I'll take her for a spin,' he'd say removing the gag.

'You fucking bastard, put me down,' Bulma would yell, as she'd spit in Nappa's face.

'She was better when she was silent,' Vegeta would chuckle, before choking her on the gag again. 'As long as she doesn't talk, she's tolerable. I'll take her and punish her. You can have your turn once I'm done with her,' he would smirk wickedly back at Nappa, robbing him of his spoil of war.

He'd lead Bulma to a nearby cave where he would undo all her binds, then without any foreplay, for any woman on any planet should always be ready for their prince, he would smash into her. Soon he would see her tears. 'Why do you cry?' he'd coo in a tone that would almost be humane. Her tears would trickle down across her legs and Vegeta would understand. 'Hoho, those aren't tears of pain but pleasure. And you shall have more. I'll have you crying your heart and loins out. Now I want you to say my name.'

He would tenderly pull off her gag, his fingers tracing against her lips. 'Say my name.'

'Vegeta', she'd respire, insubordinately, excoriatingly, seethingly.

Vegeta chased away his thoughts like they were a band of ghouls. He was polluting himself, a man of his station shouldn't be partaking in such lesser pastimes. He toughened his hold on his aching member, ready to leave the room to go train and beat some sense into himself. But then he heard her again and his head strained back against the wall to get better reception.

"Vegeta," there was no mistaking it this time, she was practically calling for him to come and fuck her. There was so much longing in her voice. Vegeta maneuvered his cock, trying to quell it back to flaccid as it throbbed in his hand.

"Right there," he heard her scream.

"Vegeta!"

And he was revisited by the recent memory of her breasts plumping in his hands, as she gasped salubriously, "Right there." And he was no longer Vegeta, the prideful prince of all Saiyans, an imposter had taken over and was using his hands to uncoil his inhibitions with some hard pumps. And it felt not too soft, not too hard but just right.

"Vegeta!"

Instead of his hand, he imagined Bulma's on him in its place and a grizzly growl rumbled from deep within his chest and then something hot sprayed out onto him and even onto the carpet below. He looked down at his resinous hand, and spread over it was a rancid poison like curdled cream.

His peak had been powerful but still tapered, like there had been some sort of handicap on it serving to dilute the strength of his orgasm. Yes, it had been so very good, but it was still an incomplete combustion that was inferior compared to how fulfilling it would be to actually have Bulma service him herself with her teasing mouth or sparkling cunt.

But how could I have let matters get so out of hand like that? Vegeta asked himself. It wasn't like I was positioning my hand so it would feel like a cunt. Not at all. I was barely handling myself and yet, all it took was one thought of her and I let myself go. Why am I enlisting myself in this incessant humiliation? Only low class Saiyans had to resort to touching themselves. I'm a prince, I should have women queuing for the honour to attend to me, but here I am.

Vegeta snatched his towel from off the floor and cleaned himself off with shame. If only that were enough to sanitize Bulma from his mind as well. This was going to get worse before it got better. Maybe, maybe he would have to consummate his hateful infatuation…and then he could earn some peace. But that was a silly surrender his pride would not allow…

At the same time, Bulma was dozing serenely. She had suffered no disturbances from fantasizing about Vegeta and had even come again from him. This was just the dress rehearsal though, until the curtain rose and actual sex could take centre stage. It would just be so much better when she could have him for real. As she had gotten more settled in her bed that was now teeming with her fluids, she had promised herself, one day soon I will have him in my bed and he will like it.

…

"Vegeta, I already told you that I'd be performing the three month maintenance on the ship today. It only takes an hour to complete. So get out here right now."

Bulma knocked repeatedly at the door of the ship but Vegeta was acting like there was nobody home. It wasn't like when a stranger called, she demanded instant access or a home invasion was pending. Bulma went up to the ship windows, scanning for Vegeta under the gloom of the infrared lights. "Come out, come out wherever you are Vegeta. I know you're in there somewhere and the quicker you come out the better." Why was he ignoring her when she would just be helping him improve his training conditions? These Saiyans really didn't know that everything she did was for their own good.

Bulma finally spotted him hanging upside down on the ceiling of the ship like an overgrown black venomous spider. "There you are, you itsy bitsy Saiyan, now I just have to flush you out. You don't want to answer me, that's no deterrent, I'll just destabilize the gravity now, whether you like it or not," she hollered while walking back towards the entrance of the ship.

Bulma pulled a small remote out of the pocket of her work overalls and aimed it at the centre of the ship. This was a device that could override the gravity chamber's controls to disengage the gravity. It was a little something she had tinkered with after Vegeta's second suicide attempt under the extreme influence of gravity. Although she already had installed a manual override on the outside of the ship and she could do it remotely from her office computer as well, in an emergency, she wanted to be able to access the gravity even if she was in a far-flung location. This was the first time she was testing out her remote which could disable the particular frequency of the gravitational waves produced by the ship even at large-scale distances. And it seemed that she had another hit on her hands, as the hum of the gravity chamber quietened and was replaced by Vegeta's frustrated growls.

The door of the chamber clanged open and Bulma could see some of the metal hinges dent and start to separate from its scaffolding. "Careful Vegeta," Bulma winced," this is just going to take longer if you break the door down."

Vegeta finally emerged from the ship, and smoke from the burnt ceramics in the chamber accompanied his every angry footstep, matching the smoke coming straight from his ears. "What the hell are you on, Bulma? Why'd you turn the gravity off?"

Bulma made the longest most overdrawn sigh. "For the umpteenth time, the ship maintenance is long overdue. You've been overloading the circuitry by just either keeping the gravity program in active mode or on standby. A full shutdown and recharge process needs to be done. I'm surprised it hasn't broken down on you already, but that says more about my brilliant engineering than your abuse. I just want to ensure that everything is still functioning normally, another accident where I could potentially get injured in the crossfire is not on the agenda." Not to mention, she wasn't going to have his untimely death on her conscience either, not before she fucked him at least.

Vegeta's face grimaced at the unwelcome reminder of his accidents. "And since the dawn of humanity, I've been telling you to do it on your own time and not to interrupt my training. Do whatever preventative maintenance this is when I'm sleeping."

The gall of this monkey. Bulma felt that she might just have to bust the reinforced exterior of the ship as well. "You go to sleep long after I've fallen asleep. I'm not waiting around all night for you. Besides, I only do this boring manual labour during my working hours, nine to five. It's already the afternoon now, so you have to work around my schedule. It's not like you have a job," she exclaimed snootily.

Vegeta was on the verge of taking her over his bended knee and spanking some sense and contrition into her. Saiyans really did like to punish, and he felt himself getting charmed once again by her vexation-based hex. "My job," Vegeta shouted, his hand firing to smack her, to touch her, to have any skin contact, "is to train to defeat the androids and Kakarot. The former coincides with your interests yet you do everything to dissuade me from pursuing it". Vegeta eyed the antenna branching out of her pocket. He nicked the remote cleanly from her overalls, clucking, "So this is how you do it, this is how you've been altering the gravity without my consent."

"Give that back Vegeta."

Vegeta whacked his palm against the remote, hitting all the buttons at once, but when nothing happened, he began pressing each button individually but still the gravity did not reinitialize.

"Hohohoho," Bulma crowed triumphantly, "it doesn't work that way. The remote can disable the gravity but not enhance it."

Vegeta crushed the remote with one clench of his fist and threw it back at her. "At least you won't be able to use it again."

Bulma let her junked invention fall to the ground and then crossly kicked the scraps back at him. She sniffed with unflappable arrogance, "I can always make another. But you have to work on that temper of yours. Now beat it so I can work. Use this extra hour to beat off or something."

Vegeta felt that she had hit him now with a speaking hex, for he was mute and dumb on how to respond to such a vocal insinuation to masturbate. Little did Bulma know that despite it being purely accidental, he had already rubbed one out to her and that it had done nothing to alleviate his crisis. And although he was transmitting her harried words through his ears and skull, the contrecoup was received at the real point of injury in his hallowed organ.

"No. Restore the gravity," Vegeta demanded. Vegeta barricaded the entrance to the ship with his body in the form of a fiery X.

"I will, like I said baka, in an hour." Bulma's voice trailed off as she looked down at where X marked the spot. Burning back at her through his shorts, was Vegeta's erection, full and proud. Bulma blinked, trying to get a better visual of that jackpot. Damn those nuisance shorts, always hampering her view! What she could ascertain from her eyes's telescopic lenses, was that he was huge and thick, he had a regal cock befitting of a prince. She groaned inwardly. His cock was jutting through his shorts like the talking point of a majestic masterpiece that she would mold from her hands from out of an untouched block of solid bronze. Chosen from out of all creation, he would be the only one to feel so good inside of her. Shit, Bulma slapped herself mentally, this is not the time or place to get hot and bothered, dummy! But how could she abjure her covert operation of get in Vegeta's pants when his dick was taunting her so cruelly? Her curiosity was also aroused as she wondered if he were attracted to her or if he were only getting excited by their escalating argument? Kami knew Bulma got more than a little aroused from their verbal spars, so why not Vegeta too? Don't push your luck, she lectured herself again. He's probably just turned on by training, Saiyans are weird like that. But Kami help her, the courtliness of that bulge. Had he stuffed a few dragon balls down there? If he was going to give her a teaser trailer to the main action, she would have to tease him too.

Bulma smiled devilishly, "Not a chance. Anyways, Vegeta, you should get to it. You've got a desperate matter there to take into your own hand."

Vegeta didn't understand what she was referring to. What matter could be more desperate than his training?

"Your dick looks like it could use some maintenance too, maybe a little spring cleaning after all that winter buildup?"

"What?" There was that sexual vulgarity again, but why was she being so open about it with him of all people? Wouldn't that turtle hermit be more outgoing with such talk? His eyes followed hers and stopped in a clash royale at his raging hard-on. Fuck, no, how had this happened without him even realizing it? He was too incensed and preoccupied with their dispute to notice and counteract it. And now she had seen, and she was going to punish him for it. Humans were partial to punishing too. Human women that is. "What do you mean?" he asked, trying to plead ignorance.

"I mean, I didn't know I had that effect on you Vegeta," Bulma laughed, gesturing to his erection. "I guess you're straight after all. You're not in the asexual club with Piccolo and Tienshenhan. Or maybe you were, but I have the power to turn any man to the dark side."

Bulma noticed Vegeta's entire face and even the top of his ears had turned a vivid shade of red. It was the same red that was standard after a light workout or a quickie. It was actually pretty cute and it was even more thrilling that she could make him so embarrassed.

A calculating look that reminded him very much of Freeza teased across her features. "Are you blushing? I can make the blood rush elsewhere, if you'd like."

Vegeta's blood vessels vasodilated further, his blood raced to both of his heads and his blush, red, wrathful and inflamed, spread like shingles all across the surface of his skin. A pox on her for doing this to him. "You don't affect me," Vegeta denied harshly. "What are you doing even staring there, you wanton woman?"

Bulma raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me Vegeta, no one told you to wear shorts that tight." Not that I'm complaining and please don't switch to anything baggy, Bulma prayed." I wasn't expecting that thing to be poking out at me."

Vegeta had been indoctrinated in numerous forms of humiliation in the past, but this was a new low. What was he going to do to salvage his pride now? Then Bulma handed him a weapon. "What about my effect on you?" Vegeta shot back. "What about the putrid stench of your arousal?"

Bulma gawped at him. There was no conceivable way that he could know that her body was in a frenzy. "What are you talking about?"

He pointed lewdly to her crotch. "There, I can smell it."

She snapped her legs shut, trying to prevent any amorous aromas from escaping. "You Saiyans and your bloodhound noses!" Her voice was shrill and incredulous, "Are you really sniffing my snatch?" Did it smell bad or enticing to him? Suddenly, she was self-conscious about her body odor in regards to a Saiyan's acute sense of smell. How mortifying it would be if she were symptomatic of trimethylaminuria, that rotten fishy smell syndrome. But she couldn't think of herself in that offensive manner, she was more like the house special that was served saucy and with lemon zest. And Vegeta would be lucky if he caught a whiff of her.

It was now Bulma who blushed furiously. "That has nothing to do with you."

A much more ribald form of speech took over Vegeta, who was borrowing lines that Raditz had used in the past to lambast uppity women. "Doesn't it?" he smirked. "You're over there desperate like a cat in heat. I can even _sense_ when you drip from those leaky lips of yours. Drip, drip, drop. Though you better drop it onna." Vegeta folded his arms, extravagantly shawling conceit over his humiliation.

"Worthless human," he murmured, "don't think I don't know how much you want me. Don't think you get to touch." It was a gutsy statement for Vegeta to make for he actually could not determine what Bulma's true intentions towards him were except to annoy. But it seemed correct to assume that she wanted him and wanted to touch him.

"Are you sure you don't want me to touch?" Bulma advanced and put a silencing finger to his lips. "My lips are sealed. But what about yours? And there, voilà, I touched you, you horny Saiyan." He snarled and tried to bite her finger, but she put her solemn finger back to his lips. "Shh, shh, you'll be quiet and will play nice."

Eventually, she disbanded her finger gently from him, dragging it across his upper lip. She came even closer so that the border of their lips was almost touching. How Vegeta longed right then to stuff his dick down her throat to shut her up and to keep her busy. But instead he waited to see what she would do next.

"So what are you going to do about it?" she twittered, indicating to his dick, "it looks uncomfortable." Her finger strolled from his torso to the top of his shorts and with flagrant conviction, she snapped the waistband of his shorts. Her finger kept him open as she stretched the waistband away from his body. He felt mild air wind across his dick, and the erection he had tried to temper swelled back from half mast to full. There was just a scalene vortex of black space between his shorts and his body.

Bulma had to restrain herself from looking further down, because it would be like staring directly into the sun. She would not look but she just had to touch. "And Vegeta," she said, as his ki picketed around him to keep her off his property. Keep off the grass and off his ass, she thought humorously. "There's no way I could ever want you as much as you want me."

And then she touched.

Bulma squeezed his ball sack that was like two-ton gold doubloons, and used her muscle to pull his face closer to hers. So he doesn't like to wear underwear either she remarked. Bulma looked at him expectantly, and Vegeta was about to succumb. His breath released in a groan with the sound like the creaking of the plank as his body walked over it. They both remained unmoving in a wordless duet and staring contest, almost attached at the lips but not. They were both uncertain about what they should do, but certain about what they wanted to do.

Come on, kiss me Vegeta, you can feel me up but you can't kiss me? All Bulma had to do was purse her lips slightly and she'd be kissing him.

If she kisses me, Vegeta worried, I won't be able to make it stop. I'll be man overboard again.

I can't kiss him first again, Bulma decided. I've already done that twice. Kiss me, Vegeta, kiss me, she willed.

This cutlass woman was hacking away at his pride, and he liked the feeling of being dismembered. But despite the many holes in his hull, he wouldn't just let her sink his battleship. He had to sail away from the flotsam and jetsam of her arms, and protect himself from this perfect storm and throw this attraction for her deep into the heart of his dark ocean. Vegeta reeled himself away from her with disgust, but his lust did not sink like he wanted it to, it just floated away momentarily in the current of his anger and self-ruin. "Get away from me, demon woman. One hour," he said, before stalking off, his erection still harpooning out from his shorts.

Bulma put a steadying hand on her rapidly churning heart. What a stubborn ass, that was so close, she lamented. Although, it was probably best that nothing had happened for now. Vegeta still wasn't totally ready to take her on. But he had just left her standing forlorn there with the female equivalent of blue balls. Forget it, Bulma ordered herself, let's just get this maintenance done so I can get on with my day, free of Vegeta! But once she was done, she was already planning to go to her bedroom to clean out her own gutters.

She called back at Vegeta, "Hey, badman, you might want to change those shorts of yours, they're feeling kind of wet."

…

Bulma was sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of cherries, and she was swinging one of the cherries by its stem as she brooded. How to solve a problem like Vegeta? Only a genius would be able to invent a solution, and luckily, she was one, but it felt like she was unnecessarily complicating matters as she had converted a singular issue into a two-body problem by involving herself. How could she chart the trajectory of two point particles like themselves who only interacted with one another yet one of them wanted to pretend as if they were only repelled? She sighed. There were only so many times that she could go back to the drawing board. And wasn't insanity defined by repeating the same thing over and over again yet expecting a different outcome? She was not about to have a makeunder into some mad scientist with Frankenstein hair and reclusive oddball qualities.

But chin up girl, she said to cheer herself up, you're not only attractive to humans but apparently to aliens too, and princes to boot. You're like a cosmological beauty queen. She imagined herself being crowned as the universal beauty queen by some globular alien and having her inaugural dance with the ultimate in Saiyan arm candy.

Suddenly, she woke up from her pageant dreams, as Vegeta and his rock candy chest burst into the room. Bulma stopped swinging the cherry stem, and stared at him hungrily while licking her lips.

The confidence that Vegeta had initially exuded upon arriving diminished as he spotted her there. He averted his eyes quickly from hers and began puttering inside the fridge so that she couldn't check out his crotch that was now hidden in sweatpants.

Bulma did nothing to conceal her laugh and was terribly amused. "So how long are we going to play at this little game of cat and mouse, Vegeta?" Vegeta's back tensed at the fridge but he did not respond and Bulma finally bit into her cherry, letting the tart juices flood her mouth.

Eventually, Vegeta had to turn around to retrieve a plate from the cupboard and started portioning out yakisoba to eat. She was in Vegeta's range of view again whether he liked it or not, and she had a wicked idea to exploit the situation. The stem of the cherry was caught between her front teeth, and with her tongue, she crossed over the stem ends into a loop. She used the tip of her tongue to shape and secure the loop.

Although he didn't want to appear as if he were watching Bulma, he most definitely was, and was very confused by the weird chewing motions she was making with her mouth as her face was set in languid concentration. What was she up to now? he wondered cautiously as he spooned sauce onto his plate.

A game of cat and mouse, his mind answered for him, so are you going to let her reduce you to a grey little lab mouse?

Vegeta put down his spoon and was about to yell at her to end her mouth's contortionist tricks, but Bulma stopped on her own.

As soon as she was certain that she had his undivided attention, she slowly and sexily extracted her tongue from her mouth, with the knotted cherry stem right at the tip.

Vegeta didn't understand the exact message she was trying to convey, but understood that it was a provocation and he was amazed. She hadn't been chewing after all, and was just trampolining once again on his inhibitions. Whatever innuendo she was trying to portray, it was working, for he wanted to take her cherry lips against his own until they were crushed into a fine confiture.

He looked down at the ledge, banging his fist into it, as a thought not his own, that couldn't possibly belong to him, invaded his head. He thought of spreading her body thickly over the countertop, while his resolve was spread thin over her, so that he could quench this unwanted side reaction once and for all. But how was she doing this to him?

If he substituted her out of the equation and replaced her with a Saiyan woman would it be the same? He would never solve that question, for there was no Saiyan woman alive to differentiate the basis of his perturbation calculations. But no, even if he couldn't plug in that Saiyan function, he could compute his true irrationality, that in the changing moeurs here on Earth, he liked her exoticness and the fighting mystique that was draped across her like a second skin. Would any Saiyan woman living or dead ever be able to compare to that?

He turned all the way towards her. "What are you trying to do to me?" he asked in a mystic meld of desire, dread and disdain.

And in that viciously velveteen manner, of his hell frozen over from her wicked frostbite, she replied, "I'm trying to pop your cherry for Earthlings." She showed off the knotted stem on her tongue again, and Vegeta grabbed his plate and bolted from the kitchen. He was in such a big rush that he had forgotten to heat up his food.

Bulma spat out the stem, picked up a new cherry, and twirled it around absentmindedly. You may think differently Vegeta, but I know that it's only a matter of time before we give in. She pouted glumly. But don't keep me waiting for too long, this cat wants her mouse and so far all the mousetraps I've set for you keep on staying empty and you're just baiting me with your catnip.

Back on the balcony, where she always seemed to rally when she was dogged by a divisive issue, Bulma was speculating on the future as she gazed into the twilight obscurity of the sky. What was going to happen after the androids were defeated? Would she get married and start a family? Would she take over as president of the company? Would her and Vegeta finally lay down arms and submit to one other? She sniggered as she drank her beer, shaking her head. It didn't take much speculation to deduce that there was more of a chance of her gaining a stupendous ki and trouncing Son-kun in a fight than there was of Vegeta making a serious move on her. How had she gone from I hate you, I'll kill you to I want to ride your dick anyways? It seemed so long ago when she had promised herself that she would put Vegeta in his grave or even have him in her bed. The war they had, once atomic, was now thawing to cold, or some sort of armistice where neither of them knew what was going to happen next or how the other would react, but they both had their fingers on the trigger - just they were both still too scared to take the first shot.

There was the sound of padded feet coming towards her, and she saw Vegeta in his pink house slippers, appearing as if he were ready for bed, staring at her through the open door. That was another sign that they had established some sort of diplomacy amongst themselves as Bulma had badgered Vegeta to quit wearing his muddy boots all over the clean floors and had thrown a pair of house slippers at him to wear instead and he had agreed to it without any dissent.

Bulma saluted him with an unopened beer, motioning for him to come over. Vegeta joined her at the ledge, snagging the beer from her hand. The beer was still cold with the glass frosted over. It bothered him that she already had a bottle of beer waiting for him, like she knew he couldn't sleep and would mosey on over to her. Vegeta propped his hand that was closest to Bulma against the balcony rail. While they drank in charged silence, the only sound was from their bottles jangling against the balustrade.

"Vegeta, what are you going to do when this is all over?"

It was a question so flippantly asked by her that was packed with purpose to him. He had been squinting in the limited scope of his myopic vision to become a Super Saiyan for so long that the prospect of a happy afterlife succeeding this purgatory here on Earth was occluded with dark turbidity. So he was startled to have to face the unforeseen future now. There was a joyous breakout of ecstasy that rushed into every hollow chamber of his heart as he considered a life unobstructed by Kakarot where he was number one. What would he do indeed? Would he take Freeza's place as the galactic chief? Let his name go down in ignominious applause? Finally close his eyes, and sleep and dare to dream? To summarize these indeterminate feelings, he simply stated, "Be legendary."

"A legend?" Bulma pronounced thoughtfully and looked towards him, "I could see that, you being the reluctant tragic hero."

"Tch," he scorned, "there would be no heroics, just pestilence, famine and desolation and the only tragedies would be reserved for my enemies."

"Oh, is that all? No death, destruction or torture? What kind of knockoff hero are you?"

"That's implied. And need I remind you, you foolish woman, I'm a villain."

"You're no villain," she said with such assertiveness that he was almost strong-armed into believing her.

"How many more billions do I have to massacre to prove to you that I am?" he shouted, also rather insulted that he hadn't committed enough crimes against the cosmos to actually be deemed a badman in her eyes.

"There's more to you than that, more than you think you are." Her voice was barely above a whisper but it was her eyes that shrieked at him with omniscient farsightedness.

"Will you still say that when the Earth is in ruins all around you, right before I erase it out of its misery?"

"You aren't going to destroy the Earth."

"What makes you so sure?"

"The Earth is just the one and only place where anyone can make a home, don't you think? Admittedly, I am not well-travelled in this galaxy, let alone others, but it only took one trip to Namek to convince me that the Earth is one of the last few strongholds against the terrorism that is just a fact of life almost everywhere else. It would be a shame to eliminate it on some whim."

Vegeta could concede that the Earth was not the worst temporary abode, it was a place where he had never felt unsafe but it was just another hidey hole where he could hide from himself until he could emerge victorious as a Super Saiyan. It was nothing special and was certainly not a home. "Bulma, there are so many other worlds than this one, each one more breathtaking than the last, yet that did not make me spare them."

Maybe she remembered who he really was, for her glow of confidence faded away from her dully with the pale blue of her eyes seeking shelter. And his heart hollowed out once more at her switch to nearsightedness when it came to him. Just tonight, he could give her his own pale shelter which was neither sturdy nor seafaring but it was all he had. His lip curled into something almost resembling a smile. "Why don't you ask me nicely? Then maybe I will consider not destroying the Earth."

And Bulma came running to his shelter, and the sudden exposure to her returning eyeshine hit him with flash blindness. "Who said that I had to ask? I can be very persuasive without saying a single word." She played with the zipper at the top of her jacket, unzipping and zipping in turns, giving him an exclusive view again of her cleavage. She took a long intake of her drink, watching him studiously.

In response, he took an equally big gulp of his beer. "As if you have any influence over me."

"Hmm, we shall see," she said cryptically, "but besides, when you become a Super Saiyan and defeat Son-kun, won't that be enough? There would be no need to take your vengeance out on the entire Earth."

 _When you become a Super Saiyan and defeat Son-kun, won't that be enough_ …it was so natural, so plausible, almost so effortless sounding when she said it and he was bolstered again by her blind faith, his heart and all his other organs flowing rich with blood. His phantom smile became real. "Perhaps defeating Kakarot would put me into such an uncharacteristically good mood that I might be persuaded to be generous, but don't forget, you know I still owe you death, right?"

"I remember, but you won't kill me."

"And why not?"

Bulma smirked up at him from beneath her dark fringe of lashes. "Because you like me."

She nudged him in the ribs with her teasing at its maximum when he didn't respond. "Oh come on, not even a little bit? But maybe I can get you to change your mind,"…she looked down to his crotch that was carefully concealed within jeans. She really didn't like this change in his wardrobe to more a conservative style.

Vegeta was fully aware of where she was looking, trying to discern the state of his arousal, but her snooping would amount to nothing, he wasn't going to let it all hang out in the open again. "I'll make sure that you're the first casualty," he said keeping the conversation light.

"That will never happen. That boy from the future said that everyone would perish in less than two years time except for yours truly. So even if the big bad Vegeta came knocking like a wolf at my door, I'd find a way to survive."

"Yes, you and the cockroaches, the only survivors of the apocalypse. I wouldn't be surprised," he said sarcastically.

"Also, how do you plan on escaping this hellhole of a planet without a spaceship, without a spaceship that only my father's company manufactures? I guess you'll need me alive unless you want to be stranded here," Bulma concluded, crossing her arms smugly.

"And why couldn't I force you to do my bidding before I wipe you out?"

"You can't get me to shut up, how do you think you're going to make me fly you to another galaxy? Although, the prospect of getting you on my back…off my back," she quickly corrected, "is tempting."

He looked like he was trying very hard not to smirk. "Maybe you'll end up dying as collateral damage instead of me directly marking you for death as thanks for annoying me."

"That sounds like some sort of macabre compliment coming from you, but I'll take it. And when the time comes, I know exactly how to put you in a good mood," she gloated, her jacket now completely unzipped. "So you're set on leaving Earth after?"

"I would have to relocate to another planet once I destroy this one, that much should be obvious," he answered dryly.

"That's too bad, things will be so boring here without you." She looked out at the weak pinpoints of light masquerading as stars. "But won't you also get bored, all alone out there in space?"

"No." His expression looked lightyears away, and his hands balled into fists. "There are many battles yet to be won."

And Bulma tried bringing him back down to Earth. "You can't leave though without first besting me in a battle. Haven't I always bested you in our verbal altercations?"

"Tch, screaming incoherently until you make my ears bleed and I leave to preserve my sanity does not equal witticisms in our battles. Though you have presented me with a different type of battle, I could end it at any time with one hit to your head. So I'm the victor by default every time."

"If that's what you want to believe," Bulma singsonged back to him.

He slammed his beer down on the rail. "Just be quiet and let me drink my beer in peace."

Bulma turned away from him and faced outwards into the night. "Only because you asked me so nicely."

Bulma stared straight ahead, as her hand inconspicuously lumbered across the rail before finally settling on top of Vegeta's. She felt his hand tense but not retract, as her hand probed his from the hard keratin of his nails, to his cuticles, down to his joints and intricate wrist bones. His hand stayed unnaturally prone with his fingers extended as she placed her hand flat across his, comparing how their fingers aligned. He was so wooden and unrelaxed. The touches that they had shared before that were so easily and aggressively given when aimed to kill, were now evasive and careful when turned to affection...or at least whatever the opposite of murderous intent was. His hands were calloused and battle-worn against her soft and delicate ones, but she knew how to not just examine him, but how to intrigue him, as her nimble digits cruised across the lines of his hand, with each line a grooved tributary that told its own tale. She didn't need to look at him, as she could demystify him with only the sense of touch.

The rest of her senses were omitted, but all of his senses flared. There was something unchaste with the searching way she explored his hand, that seemed so familiar to her even though it was untrodden land. Vegeta then remembered that she had made him defile himself in his own hand, the very hand she was prodding now. When she was done exploring, as if staking her claim, she discreetly clasped his hand, pulling him into her fold. This wasn't only the hand of a killer but a vulnerable hand that needed her helping hand. His hand that would forever be anointed with blood, that had slaughtered so many, now trembled in hers. Did that make her mightier than him?

Tears of fearful clammy sweat were running off his hand and into hers. She was reading too much into him from his hand to his entire aching body. And she was too close once again, her lips just a hairbreadth away as she whispered to him, "A legendary hero, that's what you will be."

He was felled by her friendly fire and he had to return from beyond enemy lines. Vegeta unlaced their fingers. He drew a line across her lifeline, feeling her very vitality thrum against his fingers, before tearing his hand away. His hand reached for her unfinished beer on the rail, and he downed the remains in one shot.

Finally, Bulma looked back at him, with her own hand protracted towards him. Where would her hand lead him? Nowhere that he wanted to go. Vegeta shirked past her, going back inside.

"Good night Vegeta," she murmured, watching him while his hand reached into the pocket of his jeans for protection or to stroke a concealed weapon?

…

Vegeta was returning to his room, just as he saw Bulma exiting from it.

"Hi Vegeta," Bulma said cheerfully. "I've put the refurbished armour in your closet. The bots have been completely overhauled and now have multiple new settings for power and speed. They're on your desk, along with the other weapons that I've cooked up for you. I've got the upgraded software for the gravity chamber updating now, and if the installation goes according to plan, you should be able to increase the gravity up to 1000 gs. I think I've been able to execute all the modifications that you requested."

Bulma rambled on, but Vegeta tuned her out. Vegeta examined his room and saw the evidence of her tampering, from the group of bots aggregated on his desk to his closet that she had forgotten to close all the way, where various sections of armour and training suits hanged along with an assortment of human attire, button-up shirts, polos, slacks and jeans, more so than there had been before, that Bulma must have added to the collection. Below, his boots were filed into an even horizontal line, while above, his gloves were stacked into an orderly pyramid. Furthermore, his bedsheets had been changed. They were freshly starched and ironed and were now white instead of the normal dark blue. She had even opened the windows and curtains, so that vile sunlight could now stream in. In every crevice of his room he was barraged by her presence, her interference and her flowery smell. He could picture her sprucing up his room, reorganizing not out of obligation or an obsessive-compulsive need, but from friendliness. It had to be that odious affectation that impelled her to tidy his room when hers was a disaster zone.

She was too comfortable, too familiar with him and he had accepted it, maybe even encouraged it. They jested and provoked each other, their arguments were borne more out of recreation and their own penchant for it rather than blackmail and intimidation. They consulted each other with ideas and were enlivened in each other's company, whether they realized it or not. They were attracted to each other; their chemistry was apparent to even him now. He let her touch him, and he would depress into her safekeeping, praying for yet also petitioning against her doing more. It was a casual carnage that was so insidiously progressive like tectonic plates moving forward a nail-width at a time. It was something that was at first inconsequential, but had now become monumental, a seismic upheaval, a force majeure. His environment had the same outward appearance, but it was all a mirage that continuously depleted him until he could no longer consider Capsule Corp. as a safe haven. No, the Earth was wild uncharted territory.

He regarded the messy unkempt bun on her head and her overlarge semi-sheer shirt, that reflected her pastel coloured bra to him. She wasn't dressed to stimulate him, she was dressed so casually, and he was thwarted by her just as casually. He could move her from his open doorway, to his primly made bed, shutting the door behind him and shutting the door on his diffidence. And he could take her even more casually, until their desires coalesced and broke through the faultline in their retiring surfaces.

He was reminded of an adage, learned upon Freeza's ship, that you don't have to wage a war to win a battle. Bulma had won their first battles, before he even knew that he was embroiled in a war. She had cut him from the inside out, until only his heartstrings remained, like hard wires itching for her lithe fingers to strum at them. Although it was a less physically damaging version, they were nonetheless following the step-by-step guide of Saiyan courtship. He should have known it long before. He should have known that this would be the slow but obvious culmination of all their vicious interactions. He was no longer at war with her but at war with himself, and somehow he thought that had been her original goal all along. But no more, he could banish her just as casually as he had accepted her.

"Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help you," Bulma finished.

"I never asked for your help," Vegeta jeered.

"I know you didn't, but I'll still help you anyways." She thought that they were over this. Vegeta had accepted and contributed to her assistance for awhile now. "If I waited for you to ask for help, I'd be waiting forever. I just take initiative and do what you can't ask."

"Bulma, there's something you can do to help me..." He took her hand good-naturedly and she looked keenly back at him. Vegeta bored into her eyes, and he noted her lips siphoning in a fervid breath. "Don't help me, stay out of my room, stay away from me," he commanded severely. "You've tried your best to tempt me, but that doesn't change the fact that your platitudes, your help and above all, you, whatever ghastly creature you happen to be, disgust me."

He launched her into the corner of his room. He strode in after her, mutilating the bots and delivering chunks of metal back at her feet. "This is what I think about you and your help. It's new, it's not built to last and it somehow leaves me worse off than I was before. I only seek help from myself, I am the only one strong enough to do it. The old ways are the best ways."

Bulma was petrified with her body balled up in the corner of his room, using her hands to ward off incoming metal. She stood up quivering, but controlled herself, speaking unflinchingly. "I won't help you ever again, you don't deserve it."

Yes, I don't deserve to have you here confounding me, Vegeta agreed.

She scampered over the head of a fizzing bot, quickly like the floor was made of lava that would soon overtake her. It was one of the bots she had meticulously worked on for two weeks, for him, for this ingrate who couldn't make up his mind. He'd soon learn how far he would get without her help. Bulma was distraught. She thought he liked her now, was attracted to her, but his disgust reigned supreme over all of that, obliterating it until he was the Vegeta who had first come to Earth to kill, and wasn't her slowly changing Vegeta.

Vegeta saw her face that was momentarily horror-struck and crestfallen become hardhearted as she walked away. And for the first time, he experienced guilt, guilt like an infestation overrunning his body, guilt that he had caused her harm. He had wanted her to fear him again, and now that she did, he hated himself for it. There was nothing memorable about the beaten down, tamed smell to her fear. Her revenant fear on his taste buds just made him want to gag. Had her fear always tasted like that to him? He longed to smell her resistance and best of all her desire instead. Bulma was right, he didn't deserve her. She didn't disgust him, rather it was disgusting how mesmerizing he found her.

In his volcanic outburst, he had made it clear for her to stay away, and this time he thought she'd listen. But he wanted to race after her, to tell her that his vitriol was unwarranted, to get her to smile at him in her way that had a double meaning. It would be to her benefit to never have contact with him again, but he was beginning to see, that it would be to his detriment if that were the case. He had been too hasty, too casual, and he was on his own again. So he had won a battle, but this was just a Pyrrhic victory, where he had lost maybe just as much. But now, he assuaged himself, I can find myself again, lonesome and pure.

…

It had been a couple of weeks since the breakdown in their shaky alliance, and true to her word, Bulma was treating him like he was undeserving of any reaction from her. She stubbornly refused to look at him or address him and used her family and staff as conduits to relay any messages to him.

This 180 turn-around from her was only pulling a 360 on himself, where he was making all these revolutions back to the same dismal starting point where he was gripped in the talons of an indescribable lust and unable to restore himself back to his pre-Earth self.

In the haste of his renunciation of all matters related to her, he had forgotten that he would need her help eventually in an unavoidable way. The gravity ship was broken yet again and he could not detect her father anywhere on Capsule Corp. premises so that left only her to do the necessary repairs. He had to debate himself over whether he should approach Bulma to do what he could not, but his pride had so far vetoed any such motion. To be graced by her renewed assistance, he would have to humble himself to her, maybe even grovel at her feet, and she had already been the beneficiary of enough humiliating spectacles from him. He had achieved unprecedented gains training under high gravity, and he did not want to give up his favourite training tool so maybe he would just have to substitute his pride for progress until a more tasteful solution presented itself. He had waited almost a week for her father's return and the timing of the old man's absence seemed so conveniently placed that he wondered if Bulma had a role in it. If she was trying to plot against him, she most definitely deserved some kind of punishment along with fixing everything for him without grievances.

From that train of thought, that was how he found himself in the backyard before her. Bulma was sunbathing on one of the many lawn chairs while sipping a bright pink drink from a tall glass garnished with a paper umbrella. She was paying him no mind as he stood there, watching the rays of the sun paint her in gold. And he felt the start of a gold rush within him again, but he sealed it away before the feeling could be mined, directing himself to believe that her tanned body was not from gold but from lead based paint. With his storm clouds at her horizon, he grouched, "The gravity won't start. Fix it." That was simple enough to get his instructions across.

"Hohoho", Bulma taunted, putting her drink down on the grass, "look who has come crawling back."

"I don't crawl," he said with all his princely candour.

"And I don't help ungrateful bastards," she quipped. "My parents are on a business trip for two weeks, it's been one week, so you've got seven more days to go until my father will fix it for you." She patted the seat next to her, "Better get comfortable."

"You should be the one to fix it, it's due to your faulty craftsmanship that it's broken in the first place."

He had touched a nerve, and her anger for him was at least returning with full force, as her eyes narrowed at him like ice picks. "I'll let you know, baka, that my craftsmanship is superb, if something is broken it's because of your shoddy treatment! Learn to play nice with your toys!"

"Learn to build something that lasts!"

"Apologize first and I'll consider it," she said haughtily, sliding back into her chair and picking up her drink.

"Fucking obstinate bitch!"

"That doesn't sound like I'm so very sorry, beautiful princess Bulma, smartest in all the lands. It'll never happen again."

This was too aggravating; his blood pressure was rising from rage and not exercise. "Never mind," he spat, leaving her behind. He would find another method with which to train.

The next day, Vegeta entered the gravity chamber, expecting everything to be running as per usual, but now the entire system wouldn't even start up. It was even worse than yesterday, and he was getting more and more suspicious that Bulma was responsible for the decreasing output. He went behind the ship and began light training exercises, fuming. He inspected the fine lines of muscle definition on his chest and eyeballed the size of his biceps. Perhaps he was just being paranoid, but it seemed as if his muscles had minutely shrunk from his lax training regime as of late. Vegeta punched himself in the stomach, but his abdominals did not absorb the shock of the impact as much as he would have liked. He could not just let his body atrophy like this, not when it had been so robust. But what could he do besides going to train in the mountains again? That alternative seemed so so primitive compared to the technological capabilities of the gravity ship.

At lunch time, he headed back towards the house. Bulma's mother had left him hundreds of pre-prepared meals. The packages were decorated with little stickers with his name on them in pink letters followed by hearts. It was a vulgar presentation that was more fit for slop than food that was actually delicious and that he shouldn't have been embarrassed to be seen eating.

As he finished the last few bites of a sushi platter, he saw her again through the kitchen window, curled up on a lawn chair in the backyard with a fashion magazine. She was wearing very short cut-off jean shorts and a tight black tank-top. It was a very sunny day, so she also had on a floppy straw hat and pointed cat-eye sunglasses. If it wasn't for her change of clothes, Vegeta would have guessed that she had been there since yesterday. He shook his head at her sloth and ineptitude. Humans were such an aimless lazy bunch.

Once he had finished eating, he went back out in her direction, and she was still in the same position as before, only moving to flip the pages of her magazine. She was without a care in the world, as he slaved away to become a Super Saiyan. She was only lifting her fingers to turn the pages of a magazine, when she should have been lifting her fingers to repair the gravity chamber instead. The anger was riling up inside of him at her. He stopped right in front her, just like he had done on the previous day.

Bulma lowered her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose, "Vegeta, move, will you? You're blocking my sun."

"Is this all you're going to do today?" he asked outraged.

"It's a lovely day, it's much too nice to do any work," she replied contentedly, wiggling the toes of her bare feet, the nails of which were painted in a pale lilac colour.

Her pointless nail polish was making him even angrier. "Except you should be fixing the gravity chamber," he reminded her.

"Nah, that sounds boring." She put her magazine down and ruffled her hair along the back of her chair. "A nap is more my speed right now."

A nap? Hadn't she woken up only three hours earlier? What had she done to earn a nap besides frittering the day away? He wouldn't abide this disrespect. He tipped her chair over with his boot.

Bulma rolled to the ground, with her hat and sunglasses displaced from off her face. "How dare you, you little shit," she swore. "What do you think you're doing?"

Vegeta pulled her up and began frogmarching her towards the gravity chamber. Bulma tried turning back, but he held her in place. She wasn't even moving her legs, but he was dragging her along against her will. All she could do was swear some more at him. He tossed her none too gently into the ship, and she scrambled to stay upright. Vegeta found her toolbox in the bushes outside the chamber, and pitched it in beside her so cholerically that her tools tumbled out and scattered metallically across the tiles.

"Get to work," he ordered, as he watched her get back up, wrench in hand. She aimed the wrench at his head, but he dodged it easily. She moved as if to walk out, but he grabbed her by the wrists and held them above her head.

"I won't fix it, I'll just dismantle the whole thing," she threatened.

He wasn't going to tolerate another one of her tantrums, he had wasted enough time not training properly. He was going to scare her into submission. "Fix it."

Bulma shook her head childishly.

"Do as I say Bulma," he said deathly serious, "and then I won't leave a mark." He applied pressure to her wrists and minor pain coursed up through her arms, as a warning not to defy him.

Too bad she was Bulma, heiress of Capsule Corp., who never heeded such warnings. "Don't worry Vegeta, you won't, I always find a way to escape."

He tutted and gouged his fingers deeper into her wrists.

To prevail in this predicament, Bulma knew she'd have to employ low blows. If she thoroughly discombobulated him, he would hightail it to the far corners of the Earth. She knew exactly what to do, she wouldn't even need to lift a finger. And in the meantime, she would do something she wanted to do again anyways. It was a win-win. The cat was going to catch its mouse.

As his hold became more entrenched, Bulma roped herself in closer towards him. His warrior instincts were alerting him that she was getting too close, that something was wrong. Why wasn't she fighting him off with any ferocity? Why was she just grinning convivially like she knew that he was bringing a losing battle upon himself? Bulma leaned in, her pulse quickened against his brace and her lips beckoned.

"Fix it," he repeated with atypical weakness.

"How about I fix you instead?"

No, she won't, Vegeta tried convincing himself, as understanding crashed down upon him. There had been too many close calls already, and this wasn't going to be another one. But Bulma had already chosen for him, and before Vegeta could process it she was assailing his mouth with hers with all the ferocity that had been missing before.

Vegeta wanted to laugh at her ill-fated courage, thinking that her Earthling tricks could unnerve him. And then he wanted to cry, as he realized that his nervous system had dynamized into life and was conducting his body to return the kiss and to recreate the scene in the medical wing. Was it really not so long ago when he had thought that kissing was a repugnant act, that he was so far above? How could he have ever made such an egregious charge in light of being able to kiss the exhilarating and moist lair of her mouth? For the past few months, his entire being had been disturbed by the knowledge that he had enjoyed kissing her, that he craved it again and more. And here she was freely giving in to him and feeding his craving. He would allow it. He was a prince. He deserved to be adored.

Bulma felt him release her arms, and he parted his lips, bidding her to kiss him as per his royal decree. One of her freed hands scratched against his armour, pulling at its bands to bring him towards her, while the other hooked onto the most delicate part of his skull, and she kissed him fervently, finally with no reservations and finally with their tongues whipping together in the silk-lined traps of their mouths.

But it was not enough. Bulma needed more, she needed him to redirect all of his strength towards her. Their kiss never broke, as Bulma rubbed her body all over his with her stray fingers accosting the unyielding hardness of his muscles. She grinded into him, with her heated core at his hardest part, performing reconnaissance over its entire length through the abrasive texture of their clothes.

It was enough to make Vegeta's hands fly to her waist, and that's when Bulma knew that he was hers for the taking. She had almost traded in her purpose for lust, she still fully intended to, but first, she had to teach him a lesson.

Bulma abruptly tore herself away from him, with his hands akimbo as they diverged from her waist. She took a deep breath, and jaunted back towards the ship door, as Vegeta watched her agog. Over her shoulder, she called, with each word premeditated so as not to reveal the crushing density of her desire, "See? I told you that I could escape, and you didn't even leave a mark."

If he thought he could force her compliance, he would just end up compliant to her. No one had to know that she wanted to run back and kiss him again. Today was a victory for her stubborn pride but tomorrow there would be kisses galore, all on her terms of course.

Before she could leave him to his loss, Vegeta was in front of her as impassable as a titanium bastion. "We aren't done here." His voice was undisciplined and grew more imperious as it resonated off the walls of the gravity chamber. She would not be fickle with him. She was going to do what he commanded, do exactly what he wanted and she was going to like it.

Bulma did not suspect his resolution, and instead waited for his princely indignation followed by a swift exit. He was so predictable.

But just like that, Vegeta did the unthinkable. Her careless words were shots fired so he turned his safety off. He roughly clutched her hips, and pinioned her against him. Shocked, Bulma glanced at him and had the adventurous feeling of staring right down the barrel of a gun. Vegeta had always had intense eyes, but that look of intensity he was aiming at her now was one that either promised to eviscerate her or to give her pleasure beyond measure.

"So you want to see me squirm?"

Well, two can play at that game.

He kissed her with all the fury and the violence that had been pent up for months, his strength for once giving her its fierce focus. Each kiss from him was assured, demanding and infernally cocky. Bulma beat her fists theatrically across his chest, more for show than out of any real animosity. But her mouth was as good as his. Vegeta took her fisted hands and placed them over his forelimbs, so she'd have a means of support as he kissed her even more pervasively.

Bulma staggered against him, dazzled by the electric shock, so turned on by his dominant display. Her rage, her aspiring sexual ambitions for him, they had dissipated into the ether, now she just wanted to prolong this moment of passion for as long as she could.

She bit at his bottom lip, her canines were like the stab of a stiletto at every part of him that she could reach. He usurped her moves, biting her in morsels and desire was rampaging like wildfire through her. Surely, he must be feeling the same desire, the need for more, or was he just playing with her like she had tried to do with him? Let him play if its going to feel this good, she decided, as his tongue was a serrated blade against her neck.

Bulma had fought back, but she was still losing in this battle of their bodies. She was going to be bold again, her boldness had already unlocked hidden treasures from him today. She placed her hands on top of his and guided them to her breasts.

Vegeta momentarily halted his kisses, as he palmed her breasts, testing them empirically as if they were the first breasts that he had ever encountered. He really hadn't had much experience with women beyond killing them, but her breasts needed no introduction. He already knew what to do. He let her breasts fill his hands, and they were so squeamishly soft yet also so oddly powerful. How could flesh that could not be toned tame him so completely? Then her tank top and bra were vandalized into cotton strips that were littered all across the ship along with the cracked pieces of his armour. Vegeta twisted her bare nipples, watching transfixed as her nipples went from pink to purple to blue under his hard grip. Her breasts that had teased him so much were now at his mercy, and he would not be merciful. He used her chest as his playground, suckling on her both as a newborn lamb and as a starving wolf.

Bulma's head cranked back at the feeling, her hand enclosed around every part of him until she found her heart's desire. His erection could not be entirely contained by her grappling hand, and was ready to burst as she stroked him in such a manner that asked him if she could please him, pretty please?

An undignified rasp escaped his throat as his wood turned to solid iron in her hand. He caught her hand, throwing her away from himself so he could try to resume control. He had almost fallen to his knees in weakness when he had smelled the unforgiving freshness of her arousal being paired with her sensual touch. But she had beaten him to it. He had made her go down on her knees before him, and she was now pulling playfully on the pant leg of his training suit.

There had to have been a tear in the fabric of reality for their clothes to suddenly be in tatters all around them. Vegeta stared at her with such hateful anxiety that would have made anyone else flee, but Bulma knew it was also a look of silent acquiescence.

Some of that hate must have mellowed, because Bulma bowed to him. She bowed to him like he was king. She was bowing down low to that marvelous appendage that had haunted her fantasies.

Just as she had known, Vegeta was prodigiously endowed. Her fingers prowled over him, from his corona to his head, losing count of the inches of his fully-loaded length, and her insides twisted pressingly when she discovered that the tip of his head was already wet. The blood within him was so engorged that his cock looked almost purple. It was a colour reserved for royalty, speaking of a splendid isolation that had seldom been disturbed in all its reign. It was almost as if a patina of dust and not pre-cum covered him.

I must taste him. I must.

Bulma descended upon him, taking the tiger by the tail, taking him all in selfishly. And he was salty, sweet, every taste imaginable that could tickle all your taste buds but also stick to the roof of your mouth like saltwater taffy at the seashore.

Her tongue swirled around his tip, and she struggled to make him fit. Her deviant mouth was a sieve desalinating him, and Vegeta was making the same raspy noises. The only salient point was he was going to come in her mouth if this continued. But he couldn't just come so readily like a pubescent boy during his first lay. He stepped away from her and Bulma stared at him agape with such hostile defiance.

She stood up from her knees. Her body was celestial, marble, cream, it was just so unreal to him.

"Do you dare me to go further?"

If you dare, I'll wring your neck. His cock radiated pain. If you dare, I won't know what'll become of me. Here it was, truth or dare? Or was it truth and dare? The truth exposed to them both of their violent attraction to one another and of finally daring to explore it? But was this just like another one of her drinking games, where he couldn't lose by daring to pick dare? Or did it no longer matter, and he wanted to choose to lose to her?

"Dare," the word ripped from his mouth as neither a condescension or a plea.

And then Vegeta looked away almost shyly. Was this really going to happen? Was he going to surrender his control to her, of his own choosing? It was no longer for him to decide, it had always been only Bulma's choice. He had relinquished control to her from the very first moment she had chosen to oppose him. But why would she even want me…?

His doubts did not proliferate, Bulma powdered them into dust, as she hitched her legs around his waist. Vegeta responded by using his hands as a lever to lift her up and to plaster her back against the wall of the chamber. There was an edgy anticipation in the room as Bulma positioned his swollen cock at her entrance. They could not hide behind petty squabbling anymore. It was do or die.

I'm going to feel him at last, Bulma practically salivated, as she let him fill and stretch her.

Vegeta involuntarily let out a growl, she was so tight and so wet. He was overwhelmed by the incredible sensation and all he had done was enter her.

Bulma set the pace as Vegeta was lost to her sex. It was so wonderful, was this what sex was supposed to be like? It was the feeling that she was the entire universe, and that everything he had known before was just an unglorified imitation of her reality. It was just another thing he had been cheated of, this intensity. It had not taken the dragon balls but her to reanimate him back to the land of the living.

Vegeta watched as each time Bulma would plunge him into her, she'd ricochet off him, as if she couldn't handle his dark material for long. But still each time, she'd restart the process, coming back for more, whirring back and forth against him with the momentum of a spinning top, holding on longer each time as her body became adjusted to the feel of his darkness.

Vegeta listened as Bulma let out cat-like sounds that alternated from a hiss to a meow.

Above the din of their bodies, she taunted him, "Is this how Saiyans fuck, passively? Or have I already taken all of your strength?" She demonstrated her claim with authority, with her hips pulling him in right to the eye of her hurricane, and Vegeta groaned. God, was she going to make a competition even out of this? She was so infuriatingly attractive.

In one hard fluid thrust, he was inside her to his hilt. That seemed to cow her tigerish antics and she emitted an earsplitting cry not unlike someone being beaten to death.

All at once he was back in control, but he had gone too far. Her cry was a poignant reminder that his hands were only the harbingers of pain. But what had he expected? He was a Saiyan and she was a human, a stupid weak human as dainty as porcelain. He could only destroy, he was going to do it to Bulma, well, she had asked for it. She should have left him alone.

"Ahh, Vegeta," she moaned, highlighting yet again that he was just some savage beast.

"What, isn't this what you wanted?" he accused bitterly.

"Yes," she breathed, "just more please Vegeta, you feel so good." As if knowing the reason for his hesitation, she looked at him encouragingly, "I can take more of your strength."

Her words were a like a bullet to the gut. He regarded her in stunned disbelief. He wasn't hurting her, she liked it. The vulgar strumpet liked the tenderizing of her flesh. All her vulgarity transformed into an uncivilized decency to him. He smirked into her chest and he thrusted into her deeply. This was no time for niceties, he was going to be rough. Something instinctive took over and he was no different from an animal.

Try as he might to subdue her, it was her pussy that was his conqueror. Being inside her was an attack from the most unlikely of places, Bulma was no haven but another war zone, and there they would fight to the death. And no fight would ever taste as sweet or intrude on all his senses. She occupied him; and each thrust was his underground resistance along with being just another self-inflicted bayonet wound to his pride. The lines of war and peace between them were so blurred.

He experienced a type of acceptance that had not even enlightened him as he had lain stabbed in the heart by Freeza's ki, that he was going to die and that was tolerable for first she would show him how to live, even if his life would be as ephemeral as a May bug's. And today was Mayday. Help me, his pride screamed, help me, mayday, mayday, mayday and under the power of her mortality, pleasure would have its eternal longevity that would just have never been possible under the flatness of immortality.

Bulma's moans rose to a lyrical timbre, and her screaming out his name was music to his ears. He considered her face that was suffused with pleasure. It was strange, so strange, like an out of body experience. Was this him giving another being pleasure? He had never done such a thing before. He should have had mixed feelings about the act, but instead his own pleasure was heightened. He knew he wouldn't last long at this rate, and he sensed she was the same. This pleased him to no end.

But he wanted to hold out a bit longer, so he needed a break from her face. He fastened her body to his, and Bulma felt her breasts slam into the gravity console, as he took her from behind. Vegeta was becoming more animalistic since she was even tighter in that position.

Bulma urged him on mercilessly, thrusting her hips into his while her hands clawed without purpose across the synthetic frame of the console. As Vegeta burrowed into her, Bulma fit him like a sheathe for a sword, she was the only safeguard of his violence from the world.

Bang, bang, that was the sound of their bodies hitting against one another's. That was the sound and feeling of each thrust of his into her like the shooting and recoil of a gun, where there were no blanks being fired but silver bullets. This was the equal and opposite reaction, the fulfilment of the third law, which was the only law that mattered in the wild. Vegeta would shoot her down like she was a sitting duck, then pull her back up by her hair like she was a phoenix reborn.

Suddenly, he felt her tighten unbelievably against him, and she pulsated hectically against his cock.

"Vegeta! I'm going to come!"

Her wetness encircled him, and in this whirlwind of sensation, he could no longer thrust. His pleasure just expanded in an infinite series with a factorial B! Vegeta nearly died by giving her his golden shot, that surged into her with the power of a big bang attack. The feeling in his whole body multiplied from absolutely nothing into everything in the known universe as he sprinkled her insides with shot after shot of his stardust. Was this another moment of weakness or a second shot at life?

Even when it was over, he still felt an infinity of sensation, thought, and pleasure for his own pitiful finite existence. All of spacetime was encompassing this emotion, this passion that he had for her. He was just marinating in the feeling, a victim to her body and he would have thrown away the key to his freedom at that moment for more. He was still inside her and never wanted to leave.

"I still won't fix it," Bulma said raggedly.

Vegeta chuckled, and because of that small motion and because she was too warm and slippery and he had grown soft, his velvet revolver withdrew from her and fell back into the colourless world and that change of state made all the difference. The gravity of what they had just done hung over Vegeta like a malediction.

He harshly sprawled her body across the console in his haste to retreat and to cover himself with a scrap of cloth. "I expect you to have this fixed by tomorrow", he said rudely, his cold mask back in place.

He stormed out of the ship and rocketed into the sky, as far away from her as he could get.

This had all happened so fast. Bulma turned around, but Vegeta was already long gone. Did that just really happen? she wondered. Her shredded clothes, her throbbing core, his warm cum streaming down her legs were all answering her with a resounding yes.

* * *

Phew, that was a doozy of a chapter for our beloved protagonists. Those will probably be the fluffiest and most trope-filled scenarios you will find from me for B/V. Maybe you can tell, but I was heavily inspired by the science of Newton and Kepler when writing this chapter. Stay tuned for more smut!


	5. Needful Things

Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Ball otherwise Vegeta would just fight topless and gloveless all of the time.

There have been a lot of personal and professional setbacks in completing this chapter, but I finally made it more or less unscathed to the other side. This chapter is mostly gratuitous sex slapped together with a smidgen of plot. Next chapter will be more plot-oriented and less descriptive.

The title of this chapter comes from a Stephen King novel about a wheeling and dealing devilish type who peddles goods that give people everything that they want at a price, which has nothing to do with Vegebul, except Vegebul's union could be described as the classic example of two needful things coming together.

A list of other inspirations that made this chapter possible is included at the end.

 **Chapter 5 - Needful Things**

Vegeta flew disorientedly and he landed inexpertly on a hill pass that was ringed by a crown of peaks. His spirit was feverous from the sickening highs and lows he had experienced in one hop, skip and jump and he was struck by the absurdity of it all. He exhaled granularly, his breath condensing in a fog around him from the cool alpine air.

His body had an itch that he had scratched, but he had enough experience to know well enough that scratching only formed pus-filled sores and it would have been better to have let his swelling go down on its own. His mind flashed the last image that he had involuntarily seen before he had taken for the skies, of Bulma straggled across the console, with her legs bent at awkward angles and with her gash oozing out his cum, her pussy puffy and resplendent. His dick swelled again against the howling of the wind. It was a rash unsightly mess and it would be just his luck if there was any scarring.

He had hoped against hope that he wouldn't enjoy it, but the stately velour of her womb took only prisoners, and now he was condemned to a life sentence as a recovering sex fiend. Could he ever be rehabilitated when his body had been in solitary confinement with hers and when her body had banged like a gavel against his, repudiating every last one of his appeals for leniency? Did he even want parole or to be a repeat offender? It was his time for maximum insecurity for he had never faced such a trial with such an unsure outcome before. Whatever would come to pass, Vegeta was at his coming of age, the pages of his Bildungsroman had skipped ahead towards its conclusion, to the dawn of his sexual maturity. Here he was, a man whose actions were dictated not by his brain but his cock. There was some humility to arrive at the shattering realization that he was a man like any other, a mundane powerless man like any other and not the legendary Super Saiyan, and although Bulma had instigated it, he had still chosen and chased this banality for himself. He was descending back towards the needs of the common man, rubbing bits with an orgy of ordinary when truly all he wanted to do was ascend from those slummy confines.

"Nappa," he growled, "you knew. You always knew me better than myself."

In his halcyon days pre-Bulma, where his only concern had been for his survival, there had been one time like many others where he had dawdled in an alleyway next to a brothel, kicking at empty casks of ale and skewering the ubiquitous rats with his ki. There had been the funk of rotting carcasses not only from the fricasseed rats but from the nearby sweaty slabs of flesh that were being pounded into beds like cheap cuts of meat on a butcher's block.

In more time than had been necessary, Nappa and Raditz had emerged from the bowels of the whorehouse with their porcine prostitutes trailing after them, who had waved perfumed fans and scarves at their backs, as they had trilled, "Byeeee, come back soon gentlemen."

"It took you long enough," Vegeta had stated as he had stomped into the gaudy neon lights.

"You didn't have to wait outside, there were plenty of women to go around." Nappa had argued.

"Hmph."

Raditz had added in his own rebuttal, looking back towards the cooing women. "You've had women before yet you didn't enjoy them?"

Vegeta's memories had rewound to the fussy and fast trysts with Freeza's concubines. What had stood out had been his thin reedy release that had ultimately been unsatisfying and had left him feeling like less of a man. Furthermore, he recalled the faux hypersexualized eyes of the whores, and that they would either turn from him at the first opportunity, fawn over him for some form of fiscal compensation or regard him as a steward for their own social mobility in Freeza's empire.

"What's there to enjoy? It's a dirty act and they're dirty women," he had defensively retorted. "Women function only as stress-relievers for your dick. They are just less useful regeneration tanks."

Nappa had tried to phrase it in more relatable terms for his prince. "Sometimes the most rewarding battle is getting a woman to bend to you."

Vegeta had contracted his fist, an impish grin had cracked across his mouth. "A woman is only good bent over a scaffold."

Nappa and Raditz had looked at each other incredulously as if they were the keepers of life's greatest extravagance that poor prince Vegeta could only dream of. They had exchanged bawdy laughs and Nappa had placed a consoling hand upon his shoulder, "Someday you'll understand my liege, you just haven't met the right cunt yet. But when you do, your passion will far outstrip ours, for lust and violence are but two sides of the same coin to describe the same sensation, and your violence knows no bounds being more bloodthirsty than any other, perhaps even more so than Freeza himself."

Vegeta had shaken his hand away. He had been glad to have been exempt from the machinations of that physical act, that would make even the fiercest warriors transform into meek minions before a woman. "Now come on, I must be the only real Saiyan among us, if I'm the only one to remember why we're here and that's to obliterate this whole sorry dustbowl of a planet. You want thrills? How about the thrill of death while you have the lust for life?"

Vegeta had detonated his ki at the brothel, and very different screams from the ones before had pealed out from it. "Isn't that how a woman should sound? Wailing like a stuffed pig whose throat was just slit? Not wailing like a banshee because you stuck it to her real good?"

"You have a point," Nappa had conceded as he had joined him in blowing away the town square.

"Make sure to douse yourself in blood," he had ordered to his two underlings, "with all that cheap perfume from those whores, you smell just like Zarbon."

Back in the present, Vegeta was squatting at the foot of an opalescent lake and staring hard at his reflection, not liking what he saw, an angel of death brought down to earth and despoiled of his destructive innocence. "Is this what you meant, Nappa?" His fingers broached the surface of the lake, he whisked them across the water, imagining his fingers flowing through her aquatic hair. "The chance to feel her again, I would kill you a thousand times over."

The water tension broke and although his reflection rippled away, he could still see a gleam of his true weak self transcribed across the surface of the lake. "I understand, I understand at last. I didn't understand before because I needed to feel it to believe it, and it is beyond fantasy and yet I'm all the worse for it. I can smell her, feel her with me now, hitching a ride on my threadbare resistance. But how?"

Vegeta shed his makeshift loincloth that had been made from the scraps of his shorts and inspected his half-slumbering dick. "It's because of her, her pussy pesticide is still polluting over me and that has let her follow me here. But I can't be dirty."

Vegeta took a polar bear plunge down into the choppy waters. "Stain me with her blood not with her lust," he pleaded quietly. "Take it all away."

Braving the frigid waters to rid her from himself, he found the aroma of the water to be salty and sweet, just like the flavour of her kisses. When he was ankle-deep in the water, he noticed that there were no bars of ice or snow to use as a cleansing lye. It was freezing, but the hypersalinity of the lake interfered with the water molecules shielding themselves off in a hexagonal lattice. As a result, the lake would never freeze over. Such a phenomenon was just like Bulma. Even at the low temperatures he directed at her, her saltiness just like the lake's, could never be washed clean from him but would seem to preserve herself on him instead.

...

Bulma still looked pristine, but like a collectible that had been removed from its packaging and controlled environment, she wouldn't be playacting as Little Miss Perfect for much longer. Not if anyone discovered what she had done and with whom and that she preferred his wickedness over any saintly displays of altruism. When having Vegeta was still just a product of her overactive imagination, she could easily censor all qualms that her friends might have at her behaviour. And now that it was real, so corporeally real, she was every bit as blasée as before. There was a reason why she'd almost flunked those morals and ethics courses in school. Any future gossiping or preaching would ping off her unnoticed because she had Vegeta with his lead missile firing rounds off inside of her. If she wasn't a little trophy of brains, looks, wealth and scrupulous character, then so be it, she had never aspired for that anyways. What she sought was what she believed she had been cheated of throughout her youth, that irrepressible passion and she had had a teasing glimmer of it from Vegeta.

Additionally, no one was going to find out. She could keep a secret. She wasn't going to share those secrets repressions that his dick had shouted down into her body with anyone. Who would have thought that high-strung, standoffish Vegeta would be so emotive? It was only with Vegeta that her passion's hymen had been penetrated. Poor Yamacha, after such a long relationship, he had still left her with the likeness of a virgin.

Vegeta was just so contentious, so controversial, so unavailable. Only the last descriptor really bothered her. After giving in to one another, he had literally fled for the hills and it was only today that she had seen the red lights of the gravity chamber return, just as pronounced as an amber alert that was used to narrow in on a missing person.

It had been Bulma's longest project yet to whittle Vegeta down to a friend not a foe, that had somehow gotten sidetracked to lover. But there was still work to be done. She had broken through his first defense, but like a matryoshka doll, there were many more layers of defiance still nestled within him. So was this how it was going to be? Months of pussyfooting around and not even an hour of fulfilment? Feast then famine? My pussy can't take that, Bulma decided.

Her fingers stole across her thighs, but then she quickly retracted them. No fingers. She'd had enough fingers during her dryspell, and digital penetration was no substitute for a hands-on hard copy. What she needed was a man. Her body seemed to agree, flaring to life with her skin sizzling.

Vegeta was such a man, such a tour de force, such a brick wall. Bulma sighed, but she was just a human. What could she possibly do to get him in her bed, regularly? No, I take it back, Bulma said to herself, I'm just a human but he's just a man. Regardless of physical strength and lineage, he was still only just a man and she knew how to prey on the weaknesses of men.

Bulma was human, but every man became abducted by her alien charms. She was the godmother whereas Vegeta was just another kink in her chain gang of men that she had made criminals for life, who eagerly rattled their chains to commit sexual felonies with her. And her jailbirds would never fly free because Bulma would crush their necks and break their bones, make them mute, dumb and unprotesting, with any qualms becoming pigeon-toed and twisting inwardly towards her until the men would only sing like canaries for her.

That pep talk buoyed her confidence. There was no need to be intimidated by a man for his rejection was impossible, so she could go and track down that man she knew she could make weak, if only for a little while.

Bulma was ready, armed with arrogance, she flung open her door, and was met by the sight of Vegeta passing by, stopping to look coolly at her, and making her feel as invisible as a speck of dust.

Instantly, Bulma kowtowed to him, shrinking back into the familiar comfort of her room and not taking a step further into the unknown. She hadn't anticipated having a face-off with Vegeta just that second, she had expected to have to really search for him, to catch a Saiyan predator, and now vis-à-viswith the wanted man, she felt weaponless and was stymied into silence, her face burning as she tried to avoid his predatory gaze. The palms of her hands were sweating against the back of her door, her position was so unthreatening that Vegeta was the one more likely to cuff her and lock her away alone with her depravity than the other way around.

But the truth set her free, and she could go back to her old tricks. His superciliousness was a bluff, he might as well have rolled over on his tummy for all his plainly visible vulnerability. His eyes were drifting languidly across her body, lingering at the outline her breasts made against her chiffon robe, holding court on her gazelle-like legs and circumnavigating them over and over in restrained appreciation. It was an accidental reflex from him to stare in amazement at her like that, and Bulma saw him struggle to swallow like he had bitten off more than he could chew.

Ha! She knew it!

She had no real proof, but she knew that she had made him hard again just now no matter what he was doing to police his response to her. Whatever primal power she had over him was still in her possession and she would wield it over him. She did not have to put her pride on the line, offering herself up to him, rather she would catch more Saiyan flies with vinegary disdain and not honeyed words. Vegeta would come to her and she could wait, eventually he would tire himself out in maintaining this fake aversion to her and when he did, she would capitalize on it and give them both a night to remember.

"Eyes on the prize?"

Vegeta's eyes whipped up. He smirked at her, like he had caught her in the act of assessing him and not the reverse. "You have food in your teeth onna, you should go brush them."

Bulma slammed the door to her room in his gurning face. There was going to be a longer incubation period than she had expected before Vegeta would openly respond to the receipt of a stimulus from her again and would develop a full-blown fever for her.

...

For Vegeta, dusk came with no remorse; it was a grave time of hidden horrors absent of relief that his work for the day was done. Had it been for one week or two or even longer that he would fall brokenly into bed after another day of training only to have the black dead of night grab him by the throat while he could only cry in vain as the sharpest pain pierced his groin?

 _It was all because of her! Bulma! That vulgar woman!_

These adamantine erections that plagued him night after night were because of her and her medusa charms. It would take just one glimpse, just one taste, even just one measly flittery thought of her and his whole body would immediately turn to stone. And stone could not be made flesh again by his own rough hand, he needed the soft binding lovelace of her insides. In those rare moments when he could sleep, he would always awaken bathing not in some fallen enemy's blood, but in the discontented tears of his own weeping cock.

In this aching midnight madness, he would burst out into the the hallway, in pursuit of easy prey and an easy lay. As he'd stalk off, the door to his room would rattle in its frame, struck with such force against the wall that the clamour would break the stillness of the night.

All the features of the house would invert into unfocused and overly dense greys while he paced the camera obscura of the hall. Faster and faster he'd go until the only detail he'd be aware of was the merciless jab of his erection cutting into his thigh. But then he'd have to come to a grinding halt to avoid a head-on collision with _her_.

How did Bulma do it? How in the endless circle of the hall did she forge an intersection where their two parallel lines would be fated to meet?

For the tiniest second, they would both hesitate, their heads downcast as they considered how to realign themselves to their own righteous paths. Before Vegeta could charge past her, Bulma would traffick agilely to a door and the sudden movements would transform the pixelated background back to the overbearing prismatic colours of her body.

She was stopping at her bedroom door that was just opposite to him. He would have recognized it earlier had he not lost his bearings. Every night he'd unfailingly lead himself back to her door.

Bulma's stare would latch onto his, and with an eyebrow raised she'd watch him with her eyes of fearsome serenity. And Vegeta would retaliate with a look of platinum hardness that held no hint of his inner dilemma. Vegeta would broaden his height with contempt and stand perilously above her as a dark forbidding tower, while looking down his nose at her. However, Bulma would bring him back down to size, biting down on her lower lip to stifle a laugh, for she knew he was just a leaning tower that would topple over from one dynamite blast from her lips, just like he had done before.

Swerving around, Bulma would open her door and would slip inside the plush enclave of her room. With her fingertips an afterthought upon the door, she would peer out at him with one last lingering gaze, her lips wising into a knowing smirk. As her door would inch close, the returning darkness would sting his eyes like plumes of smoke.

Cold, speechless and aroused, he would be left idling there all alone watching the slow motion close of her door. She was testing him to see whether he'd barge through her door and succumb to her like the first time. Every night it would be these same reindeer games in the hallway outside her room, but he was not one of the herd who could be shepherded to her bed quite so easily. Instead, he'd wait until he heard the soft click of her door shutting before his head would slump against the frame and his finger would trace against the keyhole.

His senses would strain to feel her right through the artificial blockade of the door. He would sense her all right, sense her as a towering inferno of heat and lust, sense her one hand twisting through her gorgon hair while the other cupped her breast.

And it would all be so preternaturally quiet, because Bulma would be holding her breath. There would be no steady rise and fall of her chest, she would keep the poison trapped within her lungs much like his poison was trapped within his loins. Bulma was waiting for him before she would exhale. And he would leave her choking on his rejection, declining the invitation to return to the cult of her cunt, once being more than enough.

Yes, Vegeta was tempted, but he would not proceed. Her door was always open to him, he could enter anytime and subsequently escape his self-constructed cell of propriety and Saiyan pride, but just that one breath of freedom from her not so long ago had made him skulk back into his cage, barricading his door behind him, preferring to be institutionalized by his own hysteria instead of hers. Was he angry at the disturbance she had caused in his life? Did his obstinacy take precedence over his desire? Did he fear and hate her for her ability to pull all his strings?

All of the above.

He'd snap his head back from her door and march onwards to his bedroom in ruinous triumph for having denied her another day. Beyond her closed door and out of his earshot, Bulma would gasp for air that would lapse into a sigh.

However, tonight was different. There must have been something in the air and a schism in the darkness for Bulma was not waiting breathlessly for him. Her back was already to him, her hips swaying merrily as she walked across her room. His statue-like presence on her front stoop must have been commonplace to her now, unworthy of her bated breaths. Was this another side quest in her games? No stunned deference to his approach? That was not the proper protocol for greeting a prince, especially one that could have her suffocating on his dick in less than a second.

He took one step forward then another step back.

Her door was closing with such indolence that he wondered if all their actions were subject to that same stasis gas upon the space pods that could drug his way to deep sleep and submission. What was he doing here squandering his pride outside her door like some loyal dog waiting for its master to come and collect it?

Before her door could slam shut, Vegeta decided to toe the line, jamming his big toe in the crevice between the door and its sill, and then he swept soundlessly upon Bulma with the froideur of a mistral wind.

Vegeta's hand was about to spiral her around by her waist, but Bulma herself twirled towards him with the floaty air of a prevailing wind. Her reaction to his arrival was screened by her lashes that fluttered unassumingly at him. A silky rustle severed the silence as she untied the sash to her robe, letting it cascade down to her feet.

And he was robbed of his breath.

The first time he had not had the opportunity to really rate her nude body, having been too absorbed with feeling her instead. On that occasion, her body could have been completely planar and he would not have known, unaccustomed to differentiating the light, shade and curvature of the female form and only being interested in using her once before trashing her like waste paper.

This second time he could luxuriate in the radiance of her body whose deluge on his senses bordered on harassment. Her body was almost cartoonish in its slender curvaceousness. She had large rounded breasts whose errant nipples were petaling towards him, an ass so enviably sculpted by superior genetics, long amazonian legs and it was all topped by that ridiculous yet somehow pleasing blue hair of hers. Physical appearance had never been a parameter of any persuasion to him previously but now he was not unimpressed. She was gorgeous, more so than any other creature he had encountered in all his travels, and she was his to take…

His groin compressed like paper that Bulma was crumpling into a ball.

Finally, she glanced at him, revealing the burning crucibles of desire in her eyes.

And then his pants were mysteriously shorn. Vegeta stood there naked and hard, with his muscles tense in a precarious ladder that runged down to his stairway to heaven.

Bulma was instantly upon him, mapping the precise cartography of his body from each bulging muscle that exuded tension, danger and warning to his violently violet cock. She was on her knees, and the nervous tick at his temple thumped like a heart on its last beat. She touched him where it hurt the most and each of her strokes just added another bullet to the chamber in their already high-stakes game of Russian roulette. She cocked his gun to her head, sliding her hand across his shaft and pulling his trigger without reservation and he shot her point-blank, with his pre-cum blotting against her cheek. Bulma in her pilfered power stopped there, and breezed to the bed while Vegeta moved with dragging steps after her.

Bulma positioned herself on the edge of the bed, strategically crossing and uncrossing her legs with basic instinct. Her hands ploughed through the sheets, making it a hallowed breeding ground for ardent love. Her neck was bared to him as she stretched out towards him, her mouth contorted with the unspoken order of, 'Come on Vegeta, blow my fucking brains out.'

The airborne virulence from the cesspool between her legs hatched a pandemic within him. Her aerosol of arousal elated his nostrils and leapt against the tip of his tongue. And then she entombed all those wondrous scents back between her legs, closing all airways as her right leg beat against the bed impatiently.

Vegeta pondered cause and effect, deduction and seduction, crime and punishment, for he was on the cusp of change. The threshold of her door represented his final threshold and now he teetered on a knifepoint, a point of no return. If he encroached further along the point of no return and yielded to her ensorcelling, it would not be a once and never again affair, it would be from now until eternity or whenever he tired of her and her used up body, whichever came first.

Vegeta considered her body of evidence that she was modelling for him on the bed. Noticing his regard, Bulma cleaved open her legs again just a sliver, tipping him towards an unknown point with her icy sexuality. Perhaps, just perhaps, he could walk the thin ice of this sinful life and slake his thirst again in her crystal pools, even though drinking of her saltwater just ended up making him thirstier.

It was a solemn changing of the guard as he captured her in his arms, her back hitting against his front. She had taken up the seat of cock pilot but he was really the only one who would control all their movements. He folded her against him in intricate origami patterns, their bodies craning towards one another for more.

Bulma tried to wrestle back control, shredding her ass against his cock and grating the hard wood of his resolve down to matchsticks, their friction bound to cause a fire.

But Vegeta held her still.

His hand was buried between her legs and slathered in sheets of her sublimed ice as he made her melt all around him. His tongue played along her clavicles and his lips travelled to the nape of her neck, his teeth biting her hard and taking in a fine chunk of flesh. Bulma shivered for him nipping and tearing into her was as hot as ice.

Vegeta's mouth shaved past her neck and he husked into her ear, "I will leave a mark this time."

And although she was posterior to him, he saw the dimples in her back distend and he could imagine her eyes widening in shock.

Bulma recovered his hand from her cleft and licked her steaming fluids from off his fingers. She licked his wounds and licked her own mark onto him as he bit his onto her. Vegeta was brought to a terrifying precipice and then he fell just as brutally as she was impaled by his plummeting cock.

He was careening past the point of no return as he clutched her ass and worked himself inside her. He had just been a point all his life. He had once had a one-dimensional view of the world where he could not conceive anything beyond himself. He had had no cognizance of other perspectives and forms whether they be social or physical. He had not comprehended the concept of duality from the boundless spirited energy of coupling. But her art of pointillism resulted in the complete erasure of himself from a single vanishing point, and she recreated him in an image where he could learn the true meaning of the number two and that it held all the answers, number one really being zero.

Their bodies would mix and match; he had tried almost nothing and now he needed to explore everything with her. In each new position, his cock would never leave her, and together they synergized until they became two in one. Vegeta's teeth gritted and his face scrunched as he jacked his hips indefatigably into her from behind. And Bulma would moan and mewl as he propped her leg upon his shoulder so that he could achieve his desired penetration.

His hand was always at her breast, the bounty such that his hand was too small to contain it, similar to so many other things in life that he would never be able to grasp.

While thrusting into her on their sides, his hand sought less conspicuously sensual things. He palmed her cheek, cutting across the corner of her lip and paused to lightly cinch her chin.

And Bulma performed the same pilgrimage across him. Her fingers scrawled through the thickness of his heavy mane as she rode him and she kissed him, that being the one missing element from their night of passion so far, and it was a kiss that bespoke so much more than tenderness, and was of breaking codes and cracking safes.

Too soon Bulma faded back from him, her expression dreamy, shy and perplexed.

Vegeta brought her back into prominence, and with his hands resting on either side of her face, he dove deep into those peculiar eyes of hers lit ablaze with azure, slate or midnight blue, he could not tell which. He detected a snippet of something else there until Bulma pulled the film rudely away, leaving only the negatives in that dark room amidst their perspiration clouds of colloidal silver, with nothing fully developed between them.

Bulma crossed her arms against her chest in embarrassment, not able to look at him, and he was astounded. Were her games built on seriousness? Were her lies built on truths? Maybe that was all he had needed to see, proof positive that she wasn't out to malign him. The geometry of his jaw softened and he gathered her gently below him. Tonight, just tonight, he could get drunk on her lies and just revel in the murderous hold of her dangerous beauty but tomorrow he'd be back to his own beautifully rendered indifference.

He gave her a tremulous kiss, still not being used to the act, but it quickly turned hungry and his thrusts became more frenzied and rough, but he ensured she only felt a pleasant pain. He could not help jotting more of his secret yearnings across the paper trail of her body through lavish kisses and muzzled grunts and Bulma inked hers right back into him as well, her nails raking through the network of scars across his dorsal plane.

Bulma's voice was shot, and her walls quaked around him with a greed so immense it could have crushed them both, and Vegeta was at the point of extinction. Their bodies were dotted with sweat, their passion was as sharp as daggers, and they pointed each other towards their own most exclusive hyperdimension where they became one and all, exchanging something just as tremulous as their kisses, and there would be no return to their former selves.

They broke apart, maybe eons later, him still panting above her, both united in the rhapsodic discovery of a dual orgasm.

Vegeta had gone from directionless wanderings to the conductor of this locomotion, but it was time to disembark to his own room. Yet Bulma held him down with sudden strength. He started to pry her arms from off of him, but then the emanations of her creamy flesh reminded him so much of moonlight that had been lost and nearly forgotten.

His resistance wavered and he eased back into bed, letting her mount him once more, knowing there would be several rides tonight, some short and some long but all from a broken steed turned stallion again. They basked in the glory of their fraught union and after several hours their danse macabre gave way to a promised dawn.

...

The following night Bulma made the trek across the hall to Vegeta's room with an attitude of fierce determination that would make short work of forcing open his door. If he thought he could fuck her then leave her hanging high and dry for the next few weeks _again_ , he was sorely mistaken. He had definitely infected her with the sex maniac bug, and well, it was time for her appointment with the Saiyan love doctor for her nightly semen injection.

She was ready to pound on his door for entry when she noted that his door was already slightly ajar. Whenever Vegeta was around, he kept his door shut tightly lest the outside world disturb his inner sanctuary. She had come unbidden to his room, yet still his door was open...for her? Was he subtly inviting her in?

Bulma smiled vainly, that's what it was exactly. Vegeta leaving his door open for her was just going to be the flash point for the after hours ignition of their relations, and burn, baby, burn!

...

"Do you think it'll scar?" Bulma took in her reflection with consternation, scrutinizing every part of her ravaged body, stopping to examine a particularly grisly looking wound at the base of her neck.

Vegeta came up behind her and brushed her hair over her shoulder, exposing her entire neck to him. He saw her jugular pulse with the spate of her blood, and just to its side was a sanguine streak. A temporary brand upon her neck. A mark of a fallen woman. Exhibit A for what he'd done to her of his own free will, that might as well have been a Saiyan insignia for the new generation. They had only resumed copulating for the past week and he was already experimenting with giving her temporary tattoos. It was an impulse that he dare not try to unpack but that he would yield to more often than not. The urge to bite, the urge to claim, it was in his blood. But he could appease himself that flesh wounds did not touch the soul and whatever he had done to her would always heal, until there would be no trace left of him on her. He was but a phantom lover that vanished in the light and that only existed for short wrinkles of time in the dead of night.

That was a reassuring thought for what he was doing with her, that allowed his tongue to ghost from the bottom of her ear down across the thin skin of her neck to his love bite. He watched her reflection in the mirror all the while under his tongue's slow ministrations, and in a blink, the fight roiling in her eyes dimmed, with her sagging into him and putting her life in his hands. Vegeta caught her in a deathgrip, and Bulma moaned, the sign he was waiting for that he was sending her to a better place. Without warning, he sucked at her blistered bite, reopening her wound, her blood like a river of tears rushing into his mouth. After ripping her so inhumanely from the bliss of otherworld, her moan turned half-way into an indignant squawk that just as quickly quieted when he licked her with so such attentiveness to stitch the wound back up. Vegeta chuckled, looking at the sly grin forked over his lips in the mirror, "That's not how you leave a scar."

"Hmm," Bulma muttered unconvinced, her gaze lowered to the canvas of her white skin that was mottled with an assortment of bruises and red nicks. "If not a scar, you have left quite the impression on me nevertheless. It looks like you fed me to the lions."

Vegeta licked his lips, admiring his handiwork from top to bottom. It was his hands that had vandalized her and had made her all the better.

For a second, it appeared as if Bulma was going to cover her battered body with her hands, but her hands paused before her breasts then recharged, strapping behind her to clasp his hands instead. Bulma elongated her body so that her entire midriff was visible in the mirror. She was wearing his wounds with pride.

In some queasy middleground between being touched and repulsed at her open acceptance of his brutality, he wheeled her around, his lips draping over hers, ready to pounce and breathed, "When you lay with the lions, expect to get eaten."

Bulma scraped one nail from the top of his cheek towards his jaw in a rosy line. "And when you roam with a lioness, expect to get scratched."

His teeth tried to clamp down on her finger, but met only air and in a violated roar, he had her downwards on the bed, their bodies a tangle of limbs and with no other preamble, he shoved himself inside her to his base, chugging along with the maximum force and speed he knew she could withstand, determined that her insides would be bruised just as artistically as her outside was, and in a final flourish he would add his inky white signature to her finished piece.

Bulma let out a small whimper of pain. She was turned on, but there hadn't been enough foreplay to prepare her for how he was bulldozing into her. Didn't he know how to warm a woman up? First one had to stoke the fire, maintain a slow burn for an extended period of time and then let everything go up in flames? No, probably not, when would Vegeta have ever needed to do anything delicately? It was more likely that he would have dismembered women for sport not so long ago. Bulma veered her head back to glare at him. "Fuck me gently, you brute," she ordered, pounding her fist into the sheets.

Vegeta halted his movements, but kept himself plugged inside her, not giving her a chance to catch her breath. "This is gentle," he snapped, "I'm not tearing you in half, am I? Didn't you say you liked it rough?" He snuffed her cries by directing her face back into the mattress and returned to his previous pace.

But Bulma swivelled right back to chide him. "Just as I suspected, you're too brutish to do anything with finesse. Hasn't anyone ever told you that the joy is in the journey not the destination?"

Vegeta withdrew from her completely, angered that there was no finery, only bullishness in his motions and that his heavy hand upon her was only sullying her beauty and not enhancing it. And although she was complaining about being in pain, it was her that was actually hurting him. His pride was being desecrated in an entirely new fashion because he was more of a loutish than skilful lover, and he had failed in a new arena, only succeeding in attaining the merest of orgasms from her through blunt force trauma and not through any cunning art. "Hold your tongue," he said through gritted teeth, "I didn't come here to talk."

"No, not to talk, there are much better uses for your mouth and tongue, both gentle and rough." Bulma almost bit down on her own tongue to silence her solicitations. Although she was dutiful in having her own mouth varnishing affection on his cock, to behold how spectacularly he would come undone to her, almost bowing to the force of her skills when she was the one down on her knees, he had never made any move that he would return the favour. Perhaps bending down to a woman gave him his own unwelcome flashbacks of being on his knees to those superior in strength to him or he could see no inherent value in unleashing such a impeccable disruption upon her body when it did nothing to augment his own pleasure, or his knowledge of humanoid female anatomy was sketchy at best, and he was disgusted and intimidated by the sexual treasure trove down there hidden in folds and bundles of nerves, and had no idea of how to approach it. Dicks were easy. Everything about how to satisfy them was out in the open, it was almost obscenely obvious. But pussies held their secrets dear, and it really took some skill to get a spitting alleycat to purr.

Something in her brash statement must have connected with him, as to her shock, he flipped her over so she was on her back. He pulled her legs to the edge of the bed and wedged himself between them, lowered so that her centre was proximal to his mouth, her heat radiating in an ultraviolet sunbathe across his face. He exhaled slowly through his nose, and upon inhaling, he was immediately hit by her heady and dangerous perfume infiltrating the air. In a rush of dizziness, Vegeta felt compelled to do something that sat uneasily with him. He was going to gratify her pleasure without adding to his own. He had never gone down on a woman, but now he was seriously tempted. Maybe he had to disprove her claim that he was an amateur in the bedroom or maybe her vulgar words had aroused his curiosity about the act. He had never done this before. But if it was gentle she wanted, it was gentle she'd get, and gentle as a defanged tiger he'd be.

Vegeta was crippled there between her legs, unsure of how to proceed. His mouth was hot and dry. He looked nervous but also like he meant business.

Bulma shifted further down the bed, to give him even better access, speaking to spur him on more. "You must play my body, get attuned to its every vibration, before your accompaniment joins in and then that will be sex at its most melodious for the both of us."

Vegeta shook his head, rising slightly as if to separate himself from the situation. But then his fingers sloped from her white peaks down towards her scented valley. She was calling to him with fragrant words of musky mystery that he could not ignore.

'Do something,' Bulma screamed internally. And she was subdued as his fingers leisurely stroked her heat. She could only nod at him encouragingly.

He leveled himself back to her savage garden, aromatic and opulent, and stared curiously at the variegated pink mound, at the crinkled lips with dewdrops already dripping from the interior and at the landing strip of blue hair on top. He knew her insides so intimately now, but her outside still eluded him, but from what he could tell, it was already too showy and colourful, just like the rest of her.

Bulma could scarcely believe it, was he going to do what she thought he was going to do? Maybe he could make excuses for continuing to have sex with her, but wouldn't he definitely consider going down on her as insulting, something that was beneath him?

He would have her writhing beneath his artful mouth. 'I will make you damn yourself for me,' he vowed.

His breath released in a sting across her sensitive exposed flesh. Bulma almost uprooted herself from the bed at the sensation.

Vegeta held her down by her wasp waist, firm yet still gentle until her movements receded into flutters. With her stationary, he parted her pink petals with his lips, testily licking the seedling at her apex. At the first attempt, Vegeta struck the bulleye's, making Bulma gasp.

He licked her again, with each lick her rosebud unfurled, growing more swollen, changing from blush pink to pomegranate red. Bulma moaned and he received his first shallow taste of ambrosia, and almost stumbled back at the overwhelming sweetness. Suddenly, his face was wet. The tips of his eyelashes were speckled with tears not his own. He growled hotly. He liked this full meal of hers, that was an important part of a balanced sexual diet and that he had been malnourished from before. He would take his fill. He would weed out all that she could give him.

Vegeta switched to sucking on her clit, that small nub that could give him all the control over her and that would let him regain the power she had taken from him. His tongue swirled around her with more pressure and speed.

Bulma clutched the spikes of his hair as if trying to deracinate them from his head. In no time, her hands were covered with charcoal threads. "More Vegeta, more," Bulma insisted.

And Bulma felt what it was like again to be the subject of Vegeta's monopolizing focus. His mouth terrorized her core with the same tenacity and diligence that he applied to attaining Super Saiyan and when one is swept up in such zealous concentration, it all became clear why he was so apathetic about everything else because all of his passion was committed to the fight. To be one of his chosen few pet projects, she felt lucky too.

Her breasts were lush, her eyes were rolling back in a faint, her tongue was trapped between her teeth and then Vegeta knew that this was what Bulma looked like when she was begging for it.

"Faster Vegeta!"

She begged him some more, and the harrowing music of her moans did not inspire any benevolence in him, rather it only inspired him to conduct new forms of torture upon her.

'Now for another taste.'

His tongue plunged into her raging fire hive, advancing upon the honeycombed walls that were abuzz with lust and dripping sweet honey. His own stamen was being strummed as he lapped at her tangy sweetness. Bulma put her legs over his shoulders as Vegeta held her to him. Bulma began riding his tongue; she was so close. As Vegeta's tongue rubbed against the ridged protrusion just past her entrance, he could feel her thorns, this chancre rose in front of him, her petals flying all around him, begging him to keep her in bloom. There was only one flimsy petal of resolve remaining within Bulma, and she was waiting for him to pluck it out. He deflowered all that remained in her savage garden. He pinched her clit. The buzz and drone of queen B reached a fever pitch.

Vegeta felt her enclose around his tongue, with her walls massaging his tongue back tirelessly. She was coming into his mouth, her flow of nectar first torrential to a gentle summer rain. And as she came, Vegeta felt a screeching symphony reverberating across his own cock. Each moan from Bulma was another verse building up towards his own release. It was a startling realization that sounded so backwards to a Saiyan, that to gratify her was to gratify himself. Befuddled, he stepped back from the bed, letting Bulma float back down to Earth alone. He watched her, feeling beyond alienated from her despite the taste of her still burning piquant against his tongue.

Bulma's hair was matted and clinging to her temples with sweat, all of her was tinged with the colours of carnality. It tickled Vegeta pink as he stared at her infernal blush, that he was finally enhancing her beauty in a mode that no cosmetic could replicate.

Something ruptured inside him and then Vegeta was really going down, planting face first into the muck and mire, rolling around in the mud, burying himself with Earth's baser elements - and it was moist and warm and an altogether solid ground. He was beyond low, but he could not have felt higher. Bulma had always been the one to give, but now she was on the receiving end and so the scales have shifted and the imbalance had tipped back towards correcting itself with this impromptu oral sex session of his.

He stood there contemplating, and her honey hardened to bee's wax on his fingers. Evening out the odds with her, he liked it. There had been no calculated outcome to what he had been doing with her. He had not stopped but continued doing it because he liked it, there needn't be another purpose. There was a residual uprising of revulsion within him at that key point, that was squashed completely when Bulma reached out to take his hand.

"Bet you can't eat me just once?"

A challenge from her could overthrow all of his scruples. Vegeta returned between her legs in the ready position. He would lick her until his tongue could no lick her no more. In the past, he had wanted sex to be over as quickly as possible, it was a weakness, but all of a sudden now with her he wanted to prolong it until the outrageously satisfying end.

His tongue was tumbling back into the hornet's nest. Bulma was crying out unintelligibly. Her entire body was blowing like petals in the wind as she came again, her sweetness was the perfect amuse-bouche for whetting his appetite for more.

Vegeta had discovered this new treat and that Bulma could have multiple orgasms. How was he going to get bored of her and forswear this insanity when there was so much left to explore? He disengaged from her at last, his senses dull and punch drunk from her perfume.

"Was that gentle enough for you?" he asked thoughtfully, licking her nectar from his lips.

Bulma rose her head from the bed to answer. "Gentleness is overrated. That was the bee's knees. It was a wild, hold onto the edge of your seat thrill…" She was looking wild herself, on all fours gripping onto the edge of the bed, "...with no warning to be careful not to fall…"

Bulma lost her capacity for speech, and her head plunked back down onto the bed. 'Be careful not to fall, and I fell for you Vegeta...I came hard because you conquered me harder.' Her good sense whispered with anguish, 'I'm falling hard for you Vegeta.'

She recanted her error. That must have only been some false sentimentality formulated as an aftereffect of having several mindblowing orgasms. 'I cannot give my heart to a beast, even a gentle beast.'

Bulma changed track to their mutual interest, the physical. "Your turn now? Now you can fuck me gently Vegeta. Fuck me as gently as an oozaru would do, meaning not at all, go to town, go apeshit on me," she enticed.

Vegeta wondered if having a high sex drive was characteristic of her species or just an oddity of hers. Either way, he was going to take full advantage of it. He burned with jungle fever and seized her.

His erect stem barreled down into her peony pink vulva that was as soft as honeysuckle, as a bee in her bonnet, a bull in her chinashop, and there was no clumsiness, he was confident and self-assured, for he too could teach her the meaning of pleasure in this cross-pollination of their desires. Just as she had promised, when he came, he noted that it was more unremitting than usual, though it had taken significantly longer to get there. But maybe it was all about the journey like she had said? And maybe this would be one journey in adventuring across one another's bodies where he would find a salvation and not just failure.

...

Their midnight friction ritual was practiced devoutly, in direct contrast to the changing of the seasons. At an ungodly hour, Vegeta would come to her, disturbing the pall of lifelessness that had settled into the house. He would pose in the door frame of her bedroom, no longer a reluctant guest, but like a snake primed to strike. With a curled finger, Bulma would invite the serpent to her bed, where she'd charm him to the rhythm of her body. His kisses would swallow her up and his fangs would slash across her body, so close to breaking the skin and letting her blood gush out. She would constrict herself around him and he would let out a soft hiss in her stranglehold. They would face-off, fighting and mesmerizing one another in turns. When she would finally feel him release his venom, it would always be scalding. Don't ever pour me a drink less hot, she'd pray. How had it come to this, where he could make her drink his venom hungrily?

On a night like any other, Bulma reclined on her bed, with millions of Vegeta's specific brand of poison running rampant inside her. The two of them lay spent with their eyes level, and then Vegeta did what was increasingly unsettling to her.

He brought her chin to his, almost as if he intended to kiss her, but instead fixed her with his penetrating gaze of two black holes, drawing her light into its deadly gravity. She felt as if her soul was being crushed by the weight of insurmountable odds and even more supermassive - his derision. What was he searching for when he did this? Something more? A sign of betrayal that she had reneged on their informal pact of nothing beyond the physical between them? That would be beyond absurd though, she knew they only had a casual arrangement. She wasn't in love with him; thankfully she wasn't that foolish. And if he thought he would unearth a look of love from under the wanton greed for him in her visage, then he was the foolish one who was overestimating his worth to her.

Not love, but yes - she did like him, stubborn, unbearable, irascible asshole that he was. And why was that again? She had pondered it countless times but she still had trouble reconciling it to herself. It was as if she were trawling through some tipsy mindwarp with him and her sanity was just waiting for the beer goggles to clear. Her fondness for him was totally irrational. No - he was also determined, challenging, exciting, an irresistible asshole. It was totally rational too. Without question, she also liked how he fit hand in glove into her and how their carnal understanding was immediate and fulfilling. He was just what she needed during those long lonesome nights. A warm body to fill her bed paired with a cold hostility to shield her heart against any further imaginings.

However, as much as she tried to contain it, there was a small thorn of something more climbing like a dreaded ivy against her defenses. That night when he had gone down on her, when he had given instead of just crudely taken, he had dragged her down with him into an emotional quicksand. That night something had cautioned from her subconscious that she was falling for him. She had tried to squelch the double crossing feelings in her midst, but still some more fanciful faction of her heart ratted itself out to her more sound mind that it already too late. Was it inescapable then? Was her infatuation with Vegeta destined to evolve into real feelings and a longing for more? Could she one day grow to love him…?

A sombre smile slowly set into her features. She was frightened and it must have shown. She had forgotten to maintain the poker face she always installed when Vegeta's eyes came to sift through her perversions. Fuck it. She had never excelled at emotional warfare, she had always had leaky defenses. So what if she wanted more? What would it amount to? Heartache. The first word that sprung to mind that described it so succinctly. She couldn't let him know how she wanted to not only fall for him, but to fall over the edge and to sink into oblivion with him. Her heart wanted to entrust itself to this beast. It beat pleadingly against her ribs to try for something less superficial. That would be the biggest mistake. With difficulty, she could still escape from his horizon, she would leave her heart far from him. It would not be abused by someone who only could respond with assault and battery. She recognized that over the years, he had embalmed himself in the black wax of cruelty and aggression until his heart was just a poor imitation of what it could be. Bulma refused, absolutely refused, to scathe her heart against his sickly efforts at self-preservation.

All of these secret reveals fled back to the murky undefined region within herself, and she was her normal self again as Vegeta began stroking her cheek. He ceased interrogating her with his eyes, his hand slipping towards the bend of her lips, and exclaimed, "You always save that grim smile for me. It's a dirty pretty thing."

Unprepared for the extent of Vegeta's observational skills, Bulma did what she could to reverse the roles, so that he would be the one left feeling awkward. She teased, "You think I'm pretty? Thanks so much Vegeta! I knew you thought so but it's still nice to hear it."

Vegeta tutted, looking more forbidding than ever. "That's not what I meant...it was more like...I can wipe that pretty little vacant smile from off your face and replace it with something dirty. I can make those carefree waters in your eyes turn troubled…." Vegeta terminated his explanation and frowned.

Bulma was definitely spooked at this utterance. Did he want to absorb everything that mattered from her black hole style? Or was he telling her in his own deranged way that he was somewhat apologetic about imposing his corrupting influence upon her and was warning her that if things continued, he would be her ruin? She should have left and heeded his ominous words, but she didn't. Instead, she rounded on him, stroking his cheek now, "And do you like it, this power that you think you hold over me?"

Baring his teeth, Vegeta rotated her away from him and towards the wall. The scornful noise he made in her ear and the throb of his erection against the back of her thigh told her all that he liked about her and all that he wanted from her.

Afterwards, the last tendrils of orgasm dulled, outshone by the same regret that always returned to the forefront. As the magic subsided, Bulma would go from being the most spellbinding seductress to a plain old snake in the grass. Every detail of her body that titillated before would nauseate him in the aftermath. Curious and curiouser, that after all he had survived under Freeza, attenuating a short-lived spasm in his cock was of more critical importance to him than his pride. Why didn't being prideful feel as good as her? Maybe because he no longer possessed any pride that didn't derive from her. He scoffed. There was nothing to be proud about what he was doing with her.

As he had done many times prior, Vegeta studied Bulma's unhoned physique and her china white swath of skin that almost glowed translucent in the night. The gravity-defying curves that his hands would skid over in appreciation before would sink down in his estimation, looking overripe and lacking consistency. This was the body he worshipped that was beautiful and repellent all at once.

The manner in which he would stare at her during those rare unguarded moments following their trysts, to strip her to her bare bones, to leave no stone unturned in his attempt to understand her and himself, as to why they did this and as to why she cared, offered only more puzzles. So far, he had not gleaned anything more than she had wanted to tell him. But there had been a breach tonight, revealing the fearful symmetry burning bright in her face. It was a fear not of him though, but for herself. She distrusted herself with him. And he understood this fear very well, for he shared it. Bulma was no garden variety spook like the other warriors who had haunted him in his past, but a thorny issue that would permanently soil his hands with her rose handler's disease. He could not trust himself with her either. Why did she have this relentless pull on him? How did she make these rambling feelings come puking out of his mouth? Why had he warned her to avoid him even if he had been cryptic in expressing it? If she wanted to build him up in idolatry, then let her, it meant nothing to him. He was here for sex, nothing more.

He started as he saw the shiver creep up Bulma's spine and stared at the fluted bones making up her spinal column. He could almost sense the neural notes vibrating through the hollow tube, that made her who she was and that made her do things that eluded understanding. So much control from something so weak. And he felt utterly spineless.

Responding in autopilot, his fingers took the form of a pistol and a blue bullet of ki danced over the piping of her vertebrae. It would be so easy to turn those bones to dust, to kill her and to eliminate her abstraction and distraction from his life. Then he could have his balls back.

Fortuitously for her, Bulma took that moment to direct her head over her shoulder, aiming her own two blue eyed bullets back at him, barraging him with warmth. And so the pendulum swung back to its opposite pole. She was remarkably beautiful to him again, too beautiful to destroy and to turn to dust. The only one amongst them with any backbone.

"What are you looking at that's so fascinating, is it me?"

Vegeta jolted, with his ki misfiring back into his fingers and with his gaze leaving the delicate instrument of her spine.

Bulma had no clue how close she had just been to death. She hummed to herself, reaching for something on her nightstand and snuggled into the man who would have been her reaper. She waved a picture frame in front of him. "Is this what you were looking at?"

He glanced blankly at the photo of a teenage Bulma in a short skirt posing with the 4 star dragon ball. In the background, making funny faces, were Kakarot and that idiot Yamacha. He was turned off by it. While he was fucking her, those two clowns had been watching?

Bulma's expression was wistful. "That was taken during our first quest for the dragon balls. It was the time of our lives." She beamed up at him, tapping her index finger at her younger self, "And as you can see, I was always pretty. But I bet you don't want to sneak a peek of those buffoons and would rather drool while looking at pretty old me who hasn't aged a day." She placed the frame face-down back on her nightstand. "Better now?" she chirped. "They can't watch us now."

Still reminiscing, Bulma confided, "You know, when I first met Son-kun, I tried to kill him just like you did?" Her fingers mimicked the shape of a gun, which she pressed into his chest while winking. "I shot him with my gun. Pow, pow!" She lowered her hand sulking, "Too bad bullets can't harm Saiyans."

A chill creeped up Vegeta's own spine. It should have been her own narrowly avoided fate, but Bulma played her sleight of hand and suddenly, bang, bang, it was him who was dead.

Bulma prattled on obliviously, "So you don't like group shots but how about a pin-up photo of just me? I have a number of me wearing just a bunny costume. There weren't any other clothes available for me to wear at the time." She glanced back at Vegeta, expecting to see that endearing blush of his rise around his ears.

But no, he was doing _that_ again. He was angling those soulless eyes at her, twin black holes to rob her of her light, to swallow up anything good from her, leaving only darkness behind. Did he believe that the longer he stared at the same spot on her pupils, the more he would divine of her true character? She was not some sort of optical illusion here to trick colour blind Saiyans, possessing secrets and lies just over the rainbow. She was not up for any more of this visual dissection, so she broke his gaze guiltily, the first to admit defeat, and pawed under the bed for her underwear. She shimmied into her panties and headed into the bathroom to clean up. All the while, she felt his piercing look upon her back that quickly rearranged into a scowl. She wondered if he had found his answer this time, but somehow she knew she had just failed a critical test.

When she slinked back to her bed, only the rumpled sheets remained, cast off like a shed skin. Bulma slumped down and screamed into her pillow with frustration. She twisted herself under her covers to make herself more comfortable. Sleep is all I need, she resolved, from now on I banish all thoughts of Vegeta that aren't sexual or of annoyance. He's a murderer, remember? He was not the same man she had first met. They were both thieves in the night now, former foes allied by the same annihilating loneliness. Nevertheless, he was still a murderer and even worse, was playing her too!

The eerie quiet of night returned, cumbersome and heavy upon her. She wrapped her blanket around herself, shivering slightly. She decided that she wouldn't go to his room tomorrow. She would spend tomorrow night, no, better make it the next few nights, at the employee residence in one of her company's satellite offices. She could be thick-skinned and resist the cold-blooded lover devouring her whole...right? Or it wouldn't matter what distance she placed between them, Vegeta would snake past her defenses regardless?

...

The presidential loft on the top floor of Capsule Corp.'s communications block had been Bulma's humble abode for the past five nights. Under the premise of monitoring the commercial assets of the company, like a good businesswoman should, she had been micromanaging all the little worker bees that kept Capsule Corp. running like a well-honeyed hive. She had been magisterial and meddlesome, suffering no fools, and in her view, most of the firm's employees were fools anyways. This was all to overcompensate for the fact that she couldn't manage how tumultuous her love life currently was. She might had taken too many cues from a certain despotic Saiyan on how to run a tight ship, because one of the newly graduated interns that she had been giving orientation to, had scrammed bawling to the ladies's room. Bulma had shrugged it off, the sooner the ingénues learned the better; you had to be an iron lady to survive in a man's world. It wasn't just business, it was personal too.

When she had exhausted all possible busywork, even down to filing old sales records, she would take the private elevator up to the penthouse, drift from one palatial room to the next, immune to all the luxury, for these embarrassment of riches couldn't fill the growing cavity within her. She stared longingly out of the large contemporary windows, her nose smudged against the glass, looking down upon the glittering edifices, the smoothly tarred roads, the stick figured throng lumbering by on the pavement, two dimensional and phony, compared to the multifaceted domineering man who could set her alight. Squinting her eyes, the streetlamps would play tricks on her, and she would almost fool herself that she had sighted him in a back-alley not far from the financial hub, the imprint of his inferno of hair fading to black against the frameworks of steel and reinforced concrete. She'd sprint down the many flights of stairs, not caring that she was only clad in the finest lingerie. She just wanted to not be too late and to make it to him in time. But there'd never be anyone there, no pauper prince rich with passion and ambition, only her, the vagabond socialite looking out of place amongst the ritz and the rubble. She'd ride the elevator back up, resuming her nightwatch at the window, chain smoking and being the very snapshot of unachievable magazine sophistication. She had wanted to escape Vegeta, to moderate her desire for him, but she thought about him incessantly, craved his psychoactive influence to light up the pleasure centres in her brain again. But to her disappointment and relief, he hadn't come to smoke her out. The smog of carcinogens and uncertainty would skew serpentine around her head until she'd go wind down in an empty bed.

There had been a supper club event with the marketing executives who worked at the downtown office to usher in the weekend, and Bulma had been suckered into joining them for a post-work happy hour drink, which had quickly turned into another drink then a full-fledged binge drinking session. The only woman amongst the suits, ruddy cheeked and loquacious from drink, she began to rant, to rant bitterly about men who wanted to take from her, to plunder those qualities that she only had in short supply while leaving the rest of her behind. And they had to listen to her, because as the lone woman amongst the men, she was their superior. The same could not be said with Saiyans.

A well-meaning employee patted her on the back, "Bulma-san, are things with Yamacha that bad?"

Yamacha? What a blast from the not too distant past. She had to laugh, but her laugh sounded like she was choking on a bone of spite. If only Yamacha were the greatest of her concerns. She replied, "Yamacha's not even an apéritif, I eat men like Yamacha for breakfast." And that was when she knew that it was time to go home and face the music.

The town car parked up the driveway of Capsule Corp., and she hoofed it up the stairs to her room, which somehow felt like a walk of shame. Glum foreboding broadened with each step, despite it just being her and her shadow. Even Vegeta must have been asleep, visioning little sugar plum dreams of manslaughter and Super Saiyans. Bulma opened the door to her room and saw a swarthy hulk mussing up her bed. It was him. It was Vegeta. And he was naked.

"You're late," he hissed.

"How am I late?" Bulma marched into her room with the grace of a returning monarch. "I'm not a child, I don't recall having a curfew. I come and go as I please." She turned on the lights and Vegeta's glower hit her with a dark glow. She understood the unstated implication that once it was night, she should know where to be - with him. And she had been late for almost an entire week for these very important dates with him.

"You've been avoiding me." The thunderclap to his timbre menaced through her ears.

"Not at all," Bulma fibbed, "I had work to do across town this week."

Her voice faltered under his laser beam gaze that could take no lies and that was aimed at her temple to kill. His hard cock pointed like an accusing finger at her; it was almost frightening in its red gigantism, jovian in its temper, thrashing against his lower abdominals like a starving rabid dog. Bulma was well aware of Saiyans's enormous appetites, and Vegeta needed to be fed.

Dropping all pretense, she sighed, plopping her purse onto a fuzzy ottoman by her vanity. "Sometimes a girl just likes the man to come to her, to chase her first, to make her feel wanted, to not be easy reliable old faithful," she said, her voice dying out so that the last two phrases were inaudible to Vegeta. She spun around to face him with added pique, "I'm not waiting around like some loyal tied-up puppy for my master to come give me some attention and release me."

Vegeta's tone matched her ire, "You think you can run away from me, to get me to chase after you?" He guffawed then became mockingly stern. "You'll always come running back to me." He cinched his erection, brandishing it at her, summoning her to climb aboard. "Little girl lost found her way home," he sneered.

"Who's running anywhere? "Not in these shoes," she said looking down at her black fuck me pumps. "Besides, you came to me. This is my room. You ambushed me here."

With that simple delivery, nothing was lost in translation. It was not you came _for_ me which was both of their sexual objectives, but you came _to_ me, insinuating that he had capitulated to her by willingly entering her menagerie of vice - welcome to the monkeyhouse, there are no exits. This wasn't just blind lust anymore where any other woman could have replaced her. He wanted her. He wanted only her and he wanted her desperately, otherwise he would not have turned his back on his pride to seek her out. Her unplanned leave of absence was a complete success. It was progress that he had blundered and revealed his desire for her so flagrantly. And this was power, pure childish unadulterated power that gave her some of her own back after she had made herself open to attack by truly liking him and wanting all of him so very desperately too. And with this restored power, she could reclaim her throne.

Bulma's high heels gave her five inches of extra height above him. She bent down to him on the bed, with her generous cleavage obstructing his entire field of view. Vegeta stretched his neck, looking up at her bewildered, his hands alternating between knotting and smoothing out to ensnare her, his lips almost catching with hers.

Her breath was wintry and biting against his unshaven face. "You're naked. Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself? I don't want your monkey dick rubbing all over my clean sheets. I'm tired and want to go to sleep. So get the fuck out of my room." She flounced away from him, standing tall and dwarfing him with her dominance.

The spikes of his hair momentarily drooped like spaniel's ears, not expecting such a brutal biteback from her, before they sprung right back up. Vegeta winged himself across her bed with an extremity at every corner. He raised an eyebrow, throwing her own words back at her to infuriate, "Why don't you make me?"

"Gladly," Bulma exclaimed. She yanked on his arm, trying with all her might to wrest him from her bed but he didn't budge. She secured her fingers in the notches of his more gruesome scars, pitting the skin that flamed crimson. But Vegeta was immobile, his eyes were closed with a beatific expression, and his fingers were steepled in a prayerful posture. Stoic and stony, while Bulma panted with exertion and her salon curls frizzed.

Vegeta flitted open one dismissive eye before closing it again, "You're so weak compared to me."

This backhanded flirtation from Vegeta demolished her reconstructed fortitude. Bulma launched herself on the bed and into Vegeta's lap, her legs coiled around him, the talons of her heels reamed into his back, creating fresh striations. "I'm not weak and I'll make you move." She rocked her hips into his for further emphasis. "You'll move to the beat of my drum. You'll move to catch up -"

He kissed her, fixing her to himself, letting the womanly weapons of her heels drill further into his back. Bulma opened her mouth to him, and their tongues battled together like two insects being shaken in box. His hand was between her legs, he tore her underwear away, hiked her dress up and was ready to penetrate her. It would be rough and raw dog and fast; but that was what she needed now, tyranny and not a thoughtful lover.

Suddenly, he catapulted her to the floor, and Bulma's high-heeled feet started kicking unbalanced in the air like those of an overturned tortoise.

"You're spoilt," he snarled.

"You are the fucking worst! I'm spoilt, am I? Well, I'm about to make you expired." Bulma removed one of her shoes, directing the heel towards Vegeta to stab him. Vegeta had never spurned sex with her, especially when he was the one who had been initiating it. A fearful anxiety beset her as her mind leapt to the worst conclusion. He can't not want me anymore and this ambush was all just a game to depress me into nothing while he would leave feeling like a big man. I'm not ready for the end of the affair. And I'm certainly not ready to make him feel victorious at my expense.

"You stink," Vegeta bellowed. "And you're drunk."

Huh? At least that should be something she should be able to fix. But how rude, he didn't have to throw her off him like a dumpster full of maggot-ridden meat. Bulma sniffed testingly at her armpits. "Did my perfume wear off or something?"

Vegeta had finally risen from the bed and his vertically challenged highness was now peering down at her disheveled form from high above. "That scented water that you drench yourself in can't cover the stench of the detritus of the world, all the cigarettes, alcohol and most offensively, people, those grimy low disgusting people whose stench I don't want to defile me even secondhand."

Saiyans and their sensitive olfactory receptors. Bulma's conceit was allayed that there was no deficiency in herself and that the source of the offense was extrinsic. "I was at a bar. There are so many sights, sounds and smells there and yes, I was hobnobbing with the common folk too, so you shouldn't be turning your nose up that I brought some of it back home with me. Anyways, it's not like you smell like a bouquet of roses, with all that training you do, you smell more like a stinking onion blossom."

Vegeta crossed his arms grouchily. "Go shower before I fuck you." Vegeta helped her towards her destination, by toeing her rear towards the ensuite bathroom door.

Bulma did feel a little grimy, but it wasn't like she needed a decontamination shower like Vegeta was suggesting. "I look like a total smokeshow but all you can do is complain," she grumbled, as she turned the knob of the shower to hot.

"Bulma?"

"Yes, Vegeta?" she perked up expectantly.

He had posted himself in the doorway to the bathroom, his erection was still trained pointedly at her as the most watchful predator. "Don't keep me waiting long. Maybe to save time, you can just rinse your mouth out then suck me off and we'll worry about the rest later."

Bulma loosed the shower nozzle from its holder and sprayed it at Vegeta. If she wanted to take a hour long bubble bath, she would and the only oral fixation he'd be getting from her now was a tongue lashing, not a dick caress. Some droplets of water had splashed onto his face, and Vegeta was sputtering and bowled over that she'd have the audacity to do such a thing.

"You have a death wish, don't you woman?"

"You could have just ducked," Bulma riposted.

Vegeta scooped her up and dunked her in the shower, directly under the rainfall shower head, and he let the water inundate her, that he had without her noticing, turned to freezing cold. Unprepared for the barrage of cold water, Bulma shrieked and quickly, the black velvet of her evening gown turned gooey and rubbery like the material of an overfilled garbage bag.

"What was that for?" she whined.

"I thought I might help you remove that war paint on your face to speed things up."

Bulma aimed the nozzle at him again, hitting him square in the chest. Vegeta, now outraged as well, joined her in the shower stall under the chill of the rainshower head. They took turns to wet each other with the nozzle, and Bulma suddenly laughed as joyfully as the tinkle of a celesta. Vegeta laughed once too, a pithy uncertain laugh that sounded more like a bark.

"You look like a cat in a bag, saved at the eleventh hour from drowning, all fur and nails."

Bulma laughed again and she circled her arms around him, her head in his chest to stifle her mirth. At that moment, they were just Bulma and Vegeta, two lovers, their woes stashed away, the unstated perilous nature of their relationship immaterial, with no threat of the androids or aspirations of Super Saiyans, as they converged in unison tutti to breathe for laughter, and perchance to live.

The percussion of her heart hastened to an erratic gradation higher in volume and intensity, and she knew the cadence of Vegeta's heart was the same. Her head was in his lap, she could lie there forever, and drown in this ocean of feeling for him under the steady stream of water. They stared at one another, with a darting light connecting them. Bulma murmured, "I know I'm still dirty, but you're filthy too, badman. Just kiss me again before I get squeaky clean."

Vegeta abandoned his standards of cleanliness that were next to godliness. His lips neared. He didn't care if she was too earthy and human for him at the moment. He was close, his rich Saiyan scent was wafting through her brain, lighting up all her pleasure centres like she had yearned for that past week.

Their mouths fell sleepily together, with the bite of liquor on her tongue to the bitterness of ashes on his. There was that same sinking despair and the wonderful yielding of surrender. It was unmistakable what this kiss meant. It was not another blurred and confused turn on the schizo roundabout of love-hate that they had been playing at, yet neither of them could put words to it. But Bulma had to go and try, and thus, make those unspoken words lose all their meaning. She stared right in the centre of his polar night eyes and said, "You missed me. I missed you too."

He trembled slightly, then there was nothing. It was too oddly quiet, even the current of water seemed dammed up in the background. But she could sense it, she could see and hear his rapid withdrawal from her, as he retreated back behind his hard lacquer of indifference.

Vegeta sobered up quickly, his laughter, their kiss was long forgotten. He recalled where he was and his place. He stepped out of the shower and flared his ki all around him to dry off. He didn't bother to conceal his nudity, for there was no covering that could hide the extent of the bare exposure he had just shown her. He could only leave so that Bulma would not glimpse it again. During their entire exchange, he had been painfully erect but now he was small and flaccid. As a final action, he tossed a bottle of body wash at her.

Bulma remained for many minutes in the shower hunched over with the water coursing upon her. She was always on the run with Vegeta.

But there was no dent in her confidence as she finally cosied up alone in her bed, because Vegeta was right, she would always go running back to him - and if she could make an annotation to that, he would always run back to her too, and he would be back tomorrow night and they would finish up where they had left off.

...

Next night, Vegeta had indeed returned, and they had slipped back into their old routine except he would now enact his own revenge upon her if she withheld any pleasure from him or sometimes he'd punish her just for his own amusement. When Bulma was almost at her peak, Vegeta would tear out of her, a wake of glistening spume left on his cock. He'd wait until the stimulation would cancel out and reach its trough before he'd plunge back within her wet seam. Once he'd feel her walls flaying him for salvation, he'd pull out again, cruelly denying her bid for freedom. Bulma would ruthlessly claw at him to continue, but he would coast in and out of her with the same unhurried movements, followed by withdrawing completely for minutes at a time. His control during sex was still a work in progress, but it far exceeded hers. He could read her body fluently now, using every one of her kinks to prolong her torture. He relished the feeling of delayed gratification that she gave him; he had been much too hasty before in their little game of who will outlast who and who will come first. The silly and somewhat gynecological nature of sex had totally been repealed, replaced by him being molded into a sex god by Bulma's own hands. And would the student one day come to surpass the master? The caged bird singing, while his jailer warbled ruefully against him, locked in her own sexual captivity? Although, the torture worked both ways, and freedom and imprisonment were so readily swapped between them.

Slowly, he swirled his hips into hers and Bulma slapped his butt. He was getting too cheeky. She slashed at the stakes of his vampiric hairline, "Vegeta, let me come!"

His thrusts halted, and he swept over her, nipping teasingly at her heaving chest. "What's the magic word?"

"Fuck you!" she shouted, moving to fuse him deeper within her, but Vegeta parried and broke free of her entirely.

"Fuck you? Yes, I am fucking with you." He watched her spreadeagled and writhing beneath him. Stoppered and whining for release, his cock was nearly bursting from this power trip over her. Denying them both, he moved in, stealing a kiss, shoring his tongue against the warm cove of her mouth.

She meant nothing to him. She was only a woman. A peevish overbearing woman with a few nifty scientific contraptions and a huge house that she put at his disposal. Nothing in him questioned that as untrue. As long as she offered herself to him in gold-leafed, open-legged invitation, he wouldn't refuse. Why would he? Especially when it felt so good? He was simply feeding the flesh. It was just another inarguable thing that his body demanded of him like eating and sleeping. Nothing to get concerned about. There was no emotional surcharge associated with it. 'But,' that little voice in his head that was speaking up all too often nowadays objected, 'your body never demanded this of you before, this isn't some post-pubescent experimenting.' He could skip a meal with minor complaints, but there would be a major uproar against skipping a rendezvous with her. 'I can easily ignore her if I wish and if this arrangement no longer proves to be advantageous to me.' Static silence in his head to that assertion. He couldn't recall the last night he hadn't taken her.

The spectre of his younger self, his tail lashing furiously behind him, cast him a disgusted look. "She's a filthy human. She degrades you and you despise her for it. Why are you letting her make you so weak? Have you given up the fight? You are the prince of the Saiyan race and you have been stripped of your pride. Humiliation is your crown, you have chosen to wear it proudly. You do this to yourself, but you can make it stop." His younger self was frothing at the mouth and ordering him to stop.

Whatever he had with Bulma was only supposed to be a passing phase, then he had accepted that her presence in his loins was a much more permanent fixture; however, he had not anticipated nor could he accept, the rising cravings for her that gnawed at him constantly. One surrender in a moment of weakness had escalated into months of madness. "I train better after getting laid, she's just an accessory to my ascension."

"Wrong," his younger self spat. "You train better, but you're also more distracted, on edge until the next time you'll fuck her."

Why do I need this? he asked himself. A perfect warrior doesn't chase after a cunt. I used to be above such things. Since when do I believe in the power of the pussy?

His younger self disappeared in a dramatic billowing of his cape, while the figure of his father, telling a tale from long ago, materialized to the forefront. "There are creatures out there Vegeta, that will drain you of everything valuable - your strength, your reason, your pride, your life blood, until you are just a wraith shackled to their side. Don't let this happen to you." Vegeta had scoffed at such tales. Such creatures didn't exist. But now he was reconsidering. Who was Bulma? Weak but cunning, was this all just a glamour concocted by her evil sorcery? Tch, was he dumb enough to cling to any excuse and to let himself believe that?

She was just a woman. A beautiful woman who was as next of kin to a Saiyan woman than he would ever find elsewhere. This intimacy would be his downfall, he knew it, yet he pursued it indulgently nonetheless.

Bulma interrupted by extricating herself out from under him, and ambled her fingers up his shaft. She smiled at him lustily, "You're cruel, but I can be crueler."

"Don't you think you've been cruel enough?" he savagely replied.

"No," she responded bluntly, there's no limit to my cruelty, that shouldn't surprise you by now. But what did surprise me, was how you looked before I broke our kiss. I didn't know you could be so pure. A look of pure contentment and I was the one who gifted it to you," she finished smugly.

She trailed her fingers in mindless circles across his abs, "You're so proud and unyielding on the outside, but in the dark, in my bed, you'll grant every wish of mine, you'll fall for every trick I devise to unman you, and I'll reward you with pleasure immeasurable. What a turn-on it is to see your unbreakable will bending against the pressure of your need for me. It pains you to submit to me, and I'll wear that pain like a crown."

She rolled her mouth achingly from his base to his tip, "You and I, Vegeta, we are just needful things borne from an inhospitable uncaring earth, yet still we flourish." Her eyes roved up to meet his as she worked his length, her voice quavering with rapaciousness. "There's a hunger, an ever present hunger, that never abates. We are always hungry...hungry for each other." Slow and scant in its attention, her tongue gravelled across the underside of his dick. "You want more, don't you?" she asked, her mouth tugging at his ball sack.

"Fuck you!" he croaked, as he wrenched her head over him to take him in completely, the thick dollops of his orgasm painting down her throat. Bulma swallowed daintily, and surfaced with her lips glossed with his royal jelly.

Bulma bent over him and kissed him in a lazy, unintrusive manner, that left him wanting more. His face cradled in her hands, she said, "Yes, that's right, it's you who wants to fuck me."

Vegeta felt himself hardening again. Saiyans didn't have much of a refractory period. The images of revolt began to vanish. The arguments that had seemed so convincing somehow now ludicrous against her allure. Her body was his only vision and she inspired that same gothic fantasy within him. As a final warning, his mind exhorted, 'She'll suck you dry,' as he succumbed to his vampire lover's kiss.

Out of his febrile imagination arose an embryonic notion that grew to a shock of clarity. 'Why do I go back to her night after night?' he asked himself. This was the most pivotal period of his life, his purpose focalized towards achieving the legendary, yet still the burning rays of Bulma's presence would commandeer his attention, misappropriating it from training to starting fires within him instead. But it was a question he already knew the answer to. 'The hidden honest part of myself can explain it. My third face, my true reflection, that even I don't like to look upon, that remained undisclosed to me until now will reveal it. Because with her, I'm not a failure, I'm not half a person, I'm the man I aspire to be. How Bulma treats my body is borderline worship, with her it's like I'm already invincible and unrivalled as a Super Saiyan. With her there's no duress, no frailties, just pure visceral need, and I can forget Kakarot's curse upon me, while imbibing her body's sweet Lethe and be reborn. At the end of the day, when my diurnal cycle wanes to its lowest point of valour, when I'm just a decrepit broken man, her body exorcises me of my sorrows and lets me embrace my spotless mind, and I am revived as a whole man until night falls once more, making me remember the loathsome being I truly am.'

He was utterly impotent in training and honouring his destiny, but in the bedroom, he had untold potency with her. Bulma allowed his untapped potential to expand and cast a wide net across the world instead of wasting away inside of him. She beat him bloody with his faults and transformed them into empowering character building exercises. He was so alone and so afraid, but with her blessing upon him, anything was possible. He could not only wish upon a star, but grab a star by its core, squeezing all of the nuclear material and energy out of it until the core turned to iron that wouldn't burn away. The more increasingly desperate he became at his impasse in training, the more he needed her to renew his courage and to bludgeon all of his insecurities away. For once in his life, he was conscious of another's existence cocooning around his charred soul both as a comforting security blanket and as a tight noose, and he disliked it immensely, since it impinged on his privacy and safety, yet her existence was vital, precious to him since it validated his own existence.

'I'm running out of options so I'll run to her. Just let it always be night. Let me be this creature of the night cavorting with my angel of light. Let my succubus change me from this stone gargoyle, inanimate in the sunshine, into a man made flesh under nocturnal light - the eternal dark prince Vegeta!'

"Please? Isn't that the magic word?"

Vegeta was roused from their kiss by Bulma's obsequious tone, and was transfixed by the arresting sight of her lower lips blinged in melting diamonds.

She bit nervously on her fingernail, looking up at him. "Please, Vegeta?" she whispered. Her arms tentacled out to him, and she sprawled beneath him like a starfish. She was giving him carte blanche over her body, trusting him implicitly to do her no wrong.

Vegeta bit down, tasting the crème de la mer of her saliva calcifying against his lips. And he submitted once more.

For Vegeta, the most sublime pleasure had its root in masochistic pain, in kisses so tender that hurt more than any strike and in a cunt so inviting that it had to be a torture chamber. And then all of his suffering, all of his misgivings would wash away until there was only pleasure, he would only be thrusting into her heart of molten pleasure. In the past, he would have thrown it all away, not realizing that her sex was the sweetest fruit and that he had only been feeding on the rind of revelry before during battle. Only Bulma could demonstrate what true ultraviolence was and that for him it was the king of all. Inside her was a wormhole to another dimension, where he was buoyant and free. Was he fit to be the legendary? Did he like Bulma? Those questions were of no consequence in that secret special safe spot. There was no happiness. There was no sadness. There was just searing pleasure that allowed no room for questions about anything else, and that would have been enough for him, his universe conquered once and for all, if only it lasted forever, the seedy demons of reality not barging in to ruin it all, to fill him with fear and hate and self-loathing in the morning.

And then it was no longer him boning her, she had mounted him, making him as boneless as a jellyfish. It had once been an indignity to have her ride him, to have her pulling the reins in a saddle of dominance over him. But he had learned better, and the shamelessness and avidity with which she rode him had kindled some unabashed pride within him that he sought over and over again. Although, he was currently beneath her, he still came out on top in this mutual dependence on one another, so it was no coincidence that woman on top was now one of his favourite sex positions.

Bulma's ocean of hair rippled like a wayward sea, her breasts crashed back and forth like a tide, her shell pink lips cried a siren's call to him. It was the ultimate tribute to his conversion to sex god incarnate. One transformation quickly attained, the Super Saiyan one not far behind perhaps.

"Pretty please, Vegeta, let me come," her voice stormed out to him.

He didn't mind letting her finish for he was at the finish line himself. Vegeta felt the muscles within her tense and contract against him, he felt the changing of her tide from boisterous longing to satisfaction. He couldn't hold back any longer. It was bliss, heavenly bliss, and as he came, he stared into her eyes of heaven's blue.

The typhoon of desire calmed to a snoozy sleet. He held her against him, his eyes looming towards hers, asking her non-verbally, "Was it good?"

And Bulma answered aloud, "It was virtual reality, because such pleasure can't exist in the real world…"

'...and such delusionals can't exist in the real world and will disintegrate at the slightest touch.' The last part was said only to themselves in the tempest of their thoughts.

...

Bulma and Vegeta were admiring themselves in front of the mirror in Vegeta's room. It was a rather ornate mirror made of textured brass that added a touch of class to offset the otherwise spartan décor. Their gaze was glued to their reflections as Vegeta swooped behind her, pecking softly across her jaw, with his hand raiding for her breast from underneath her blouse.

"Mm, Vegeta," Bulma said, nodding towards the mirror, "do you want to watch while you fuck me? Does that _excite_ you?"

Vegeta straightened her body, placing his hands solidly on either side of her face. In the impartial view of the mirror, she could behold Vegeta's threatening avarice for her. Vegeta's hands were gripping her face like a hard to crack nut that he would force open, while her hands were gently fastened on his forearms as if daring him to do so by piling on the pressure.

"Bulma, tell me what you see."

Bulma was confused, why did he need her to tell him that? The answer was hidden in plain sight.

"I see us," she stated simply.

Vegeta removed his hands from her face, snagging them around her waist and reeling her in towards him, so he could speak snidely into her ear. "There is no us. There is you and me, separate not a pair. There will never be an us."

Bulma's hand immediately soared to the wound at her neck. Amongst all the wounds Vegeta had given her, this one was the most persistent. Although, even it had faded to a faint discolouration. He hadn't left her with any visible scars, just like he had promised. But it was what was on the inside that counted, and if she would be scarred for life there was still to be foreseen.

That thoughtless action on her part did not go unnoticed. There was no way for Bulma to know that there had been multiple past occasions where he had scarcely avoided branding her for life, all on a lust-crazed whim. But ultimately, he had not claimed her, he would always disallow that. He would not get paranoid from some flippant gesture from her. Disconcertingly, he had also not failed to notice that her neck bite was taking an inordinately long time to heal.

"And what about when our bodies move as one?" Bulma cut in shrilly.

Vegeta composed himself. "That only lasts for a spell that's gone by daybreak. You are but a flickering shadow upon me as I am upon you. Look again and tell me what you see."

Bulma surveyed their silhouettes, that blended together as one deformed shadow, as a self-created monster in the mirror. Their stance resembled any other loving couple but they were not that. There were none of the same properties. They were enantiomers, non-superimposable mirror images, who despite sharing the same bodily make-up and connectivity were not identical, and this sexual arrangement would never allow them to be equals to one another. To superimpose their mirror images, to negate the inequity, the bonds of denial and dissension which were at Vegeta's nucleus would have to be broken and reformed. It was the same formula, night after night, repeated to redundancy, together but alone, Bulma assessed bitterly. "I see a grown woman who should know better than to be here alone with you."

Vegeta's tongue darted across her bruised neck. "Clever onna. You are not so blind after all." Bulma felt his fingers bore into her from behind. His tongue was as abrasive as sandpaper across each fretful vein in her neck.

Bulma tried to make light of his astringency. "If this is just a spell, does that mean that I make you possessed, that I can make you do my bidding?" she asked as she leaned into him.

He crooked his fingers into her just how she liked it. "Nothing, this means nothing," he sneered. "I'll fuck you to the stars and back, but that's all this will ever be. His mouth disconnected from her neck. "So don't ever act like this will ever mean something."

Bulma exhaled with difficulty. "Have I ever behaved like I was in love with you? I know what this means Vegeta," she snipped. "We're under a spell, and none of this is real."

She had been most guarded and circumspect in how she conducted herself towards Vegeta in all situations save for their trysts. Although, she had vacillated with the idea of introducing elements of a proper relationship to him, whenever she had been in front of him like this, privy to his naked rancour for her, the concept had seemed so inconceivable that she relegated it to impulses from a childish dream world. She was corralling her wayward thoughts and had never voiced any of them to him. Perhaps he had glimpsed something untoward in the stark openness of her features before, but she would never fess up to it. If she actually was smitten with him, then that was her secret. Bulma was quite affronted that Vegeta was ascribing clinginess to her. She was not making something out of nothing with him, giving meaning where there was none. Being clingy had never been her modus operandi when inveigling a man. Having Vegeta calling the shots, trying to exercise his authority over her, putting his foot down on her feelings when she hadn't even fully sorted them out for herself yet, was beyond irksome, especially when he was prohibiting something that she had already concluded would not be possible despite wishing for it very much.

"Not yet," he admitted, "but you humans have funny romantic hang-ups."

"Why don't you tell that to yourself?" she fired back. One of his fingers jabbed into her sharply and she yelped.

"I am not your lover, I am not your friend, I am a beast you cannot tame."

"Even the beast has beauty," she quietly moaned, sinking down against him.

Vegeta immediately retracted his fingers from her with a moist sounding pop.

"Who said I wanted to tame you?" Bulma erected herself, driving her ass into him. She snatched his fingers and re-inserted them inside her, coordinating his movements until Vegeta continued on his own. "I like things just how they are," she contended.

"Keep it that way. I will not abide your pitiful Earthling feelings," Vegeta said, grimacing. For Bulma to so impudently suggest that she could be the beauty to his beast, made the already pinched lines of his face tighten. Glancing at her reflection as she scuffed at his arms, wild and waspish, she was indeed that dark and bestial beauty to his beast just then, and that sparked the urge to subjugate her once more within him.

Vegeta bowed her body and Bulma used the frame of the mirror to brace herself. He pushed inside her and for a long while as they attended to their inner reflections and needs, it was palpable this incongruity of being merged but distinct.

Abruptly, beneath a sheen of sweat, Vegeta commanded, "Look at me." Only the excessive arch of her back, signalling that she was on tenterhooks was visible to him. Vegeta tilted her chin up until their eyes linked again in the mirror. Vegeta kept her head aloft, as he concentrated on her obstinate eyes, checking for duplicity. He rammed his dick up to her cervix, "Do you understand?"

As he touched the deepest depths within her, Bulma understood. Her desire was not the same as his desire. Furthermore, she understood herself. In her very own labyrinth, in the primitive corn maze of her soul that she had dared not enter before, she understood that she thrived on the dysfunction. It was a great privilege to have this unpredictable passion in her life and it bloated her ego to be able to turn a diamond in the rough into her own diamond solitaire for her to wear and flaunt in triumph. Only she had made this obstreperous Saiyan, murderous to all, be slightly amenable to her, and the challenge invigorated her. But most importantly, he breathed life into the straw organs of her dead scarecrow self until she had a beating heart of gold again. And it was such hocus pocus that she could no longer perform for herself.

"I understand. But you should look closer, look closer at yourself, for even mirrors can't show you everything, they can't show you who you really are." Mirrors aren't sensitive enough to magnify your defective reasoning at a high enough resolution. A mirror cannot divulge how many carats this illicit engagement between us is. But I know that it's priceless.

"I've seen all I need to see."

And for the briefest second, the vagary of his expression became optically active. She saw something within him beyond the pale, beyond that hunger, that she couldn't identify mixed in with a strange fear. She saw a man who wasn't there. She had unveiled the seldom seen third face to the proud Saiyan prince.

Bulma could not unmask it further as Vegeta's fist shot forth, smashing the mirror, and shards of glass flurried across the room like they were trapped inside a violently shaken snow globe. Bulma's hands dashed upwards to shelter herself from the fragments, but it wasn't required as somehow Vegeta had made it so that the wreckage would land anywhere but on themselves.

Bulma was flustered both by Vegeta's outburst and that she was at the brink of climaxing. They were non-complementary states to experience concurrently. How can you see what lies beneath? How can you tell how deep something truly is when you'll only wade close to the surface, when you'll only dip one toe in at a time? You don't know anything until you're fully submerged, she thought as a perfect storm collided with her body.

The tremendous waves ebbed back to low tide, and Bulma peered down and saw her reflection staring back at her in an oblong piece of the mirror. What was flashed back startled her, as she hadn't felt, she hadn't known, she only saw the single tear that rolled down her cheek.

No other sounds had been emitted from her, she had been resolutely mute, even when he felt her come with her insides chattering in a screaming mass of flesh around him, that made him cry out her name with such fanatic folly that any voyeur would have mistaken him as the one who could not control his feelings and not her. But that was just the nature of her seduction, glorifying the deception that he was in control when he was pouring his emotions into her one thrust at a time.

"How does it feel, Bulma? Am I good?" he finally asked aloud after an entire history of vocalizing nothing. But she would not answer.

So many clumsy, insufficient words sloshed across his vocal chords before crumbling against his teeth. He looked down at the scattered shards of glass and saw a cracked reflection of someone unrecognizable. Who was this man in the mirror?

With fierce strength, he jerked her head up towards him and kissed her with electric charge in the flow of his lips, and this was him possessed by her, just for a spell. Bulma's lips were dry and cracking against his, she was completely unresponsive. As he elocuted himself to her in tongues with that kiss, Vegeta kept one eye open and locked on their warped reflections.

Beneath the salty tears peppering her eyes, Bulma saw that it had all changed, if only for that moment. Her desire was the same as his desire. All the secret code had unscrambled into the very picture of togetherness. They were the same overlapping image of one another, two opposite sides of the whole present in equal measure, a true race-mate.

Vegeta saw her wipe a tear of perspiration from her cheek, as her slender arm, still shaking from the tremors of her orgasm, pulled him close. And then all at once, her mouth contested his with equal fervor and he groaned. Bulma was finally kissing him back and grinding him down into powdered glass, as a purity of feeling simultaneously shattered and repaired him.

...

"Vegeta," Bulma called out to him from the pool, "come take a swim. It's so hot out today, you don't want to spend it cooped up in the gravity chamber. Swimming still counts as training, so this won't even be a cheat day for you."

Vegeta had been so preoccupied with restructuring his training regimen as he strode up the garden path back to the ship, that he had subconsciously not only taken a detour but had wandered up to the pebble aggregate finish enclosing the pool, and if he had taken just a few more steps, he would have fallen straight into the deep end. Upon reacquainting himself with his surroundings, Vegeta spared her one glance, and instantly regretted it.

Bulma was hoisting herself up the rails of the ladder leading out from the pool. Water droplets glistened off her skin in shiny refractile circles that smarted his eyes. After blinking to clear his vision, he saw that she was wearing the most obscene thing he had ever seen. Her upper garment was composed of two mere triangles, that strained to the point of collapse across her breasts. It had to have been a couple sizes too small, but maybe that was by purposeful design, to make her ample bosom appear even more humongous. The bottom wasn't any better, it was barely more than a piece of string. The entire outfit, if it could be labelled as such, was royal blue.

Royal blue for a royal prince, he approved despite himself, the colour at least was following Saiyan dress code. Stop that at once, he reprimanded himself, he could not afford any derailments when his agenda for the day was as jam-packed as it was.

Although it was only one glance, Bulma noticed that he used it to gawk at her. She smiled deviously, her ego inflated once more that no man, alien or not, could resist checking her out. "It's called a bikini, Vegeta. Women wear them when they go swimming or to the beach. Do you like it?" she crooned, puffing her chest out at him.

What kind of bathing costume was that? It offered no protection against the elements, she might as well have swum naked. On second thought, Vegeta amended to himself, let her keep it on.

Bulma started sauntering over to him, and he saw that her hair was tied in two plaits that seemed to give her a more adolescent appearance without detracting from her vixenish air. What was she doing trying to look so innocent and naughty at the same time? It was confusing and bewitching all at once, and Vegeta was determined that his manhood would not have more than an emollient reaction to her. As she walked over, her pigtails and breasts both bounced gaily, and he was entranced by that sight along with the pool water beading across her body to slip and slide to a trail at her feet.

"You do know how to swim, don't you?" Bulma teased.

"Of course I do," he replied vexedly, "your kind of splashing about is not anything I would consider training though." He plodded on ahead to the gravity chamber, not daring to take another gander at her.

"Suit yourself." If Vegeta wanted to roast alive in the gravity chamber during the unseasonable heat wave that had hit West City, that was his prerogative. Bulma jumped from the diving board back into the pool with a large cannonball. Some of the water from the impact rained upon Vegeta's back, making him growl with discontent, and not cooling but further boiling the already riled skin there.

So much for his productive training schedule today. The dial controlling the gravity was only at 1 g, yet Vegeta still was gulping in air as if he had just completed the most arduous workout. He was parked in the corner of the ship, sitting in a puddle of his own sweat. Beside him lay the remains of the thermostat that he had gutted from its casing in anger once he realized that even the maximum output was still not good enough to provide any succor against the lucifer heat that was condensing around him. The mercury had been tipping past 40 °C for the past few days, but that should have been trivial to a him, a Saiyan native to the hostile deserts and wrathful sun of Vegetasei.

The source of his discomfiture was not environmental but much more centralized. His erection that had been temperate poolside had enlarged into a blistering firebrand that was burning him down to the bone and even thinking of Freeza wouldn't alleviate it. What was seared onto his retinas was the image of Bulma prancing around in her skimpy bikini with her sun-kissed skin and girlish plaits. He had romped with her only twelve hours before, so why was he lusting after her again so soon? It was the middle of the day, and daylight hours were strictly reserved for preparing for the androids, his debauchery only reared its ugly head nocturnally, and he was loathe for there to be any knock-up to his daily program. Yet there he was, near choking and profusely sweating on the tiled floor of the ship, being continually waterboarded by just the memory of her mawkish smell, his training for the day indefinitely deferred until some resolution could be had. A droplet of sweat accumulated on the tip of his aristocratic nose before dribbling down to his jogging pants. Vegeta couldn't take anymore. He had to get her out of his system.

Bulma was lying lazily on a sunlounger that was situated under the shade of some of the palm trees that dotted the compound. She was well on her way to obtaining the perfect tan when suddenly, the wind changed, with the palmetto leaves fanning away from her towards the direction of Capsule Corp.'s dome like the wings of migratory birds heading south for the winter and even the sunlight seemed dampened. Such meteorological fluctuations could only signify one thing, that hurricane Vegeta was upon her again. And there he was before her, sweating bullets, which must have been due to his brief training labours.

"That didn't take long for you to reconsider. You're going to take my advice and come for a swim after all. Good choice, let me just get you some swimming trunks." Bulma scooted from the lounger and went into the beach cabana by the pool and quickly reemerged with a hot pink speedo. She threw it at Vegeta's feet. "I had to buy this for you, it had your name written all over it."

Vegeta growled, not only was it pink but the words badman were emblazoned on the bottom. It was just like that damn shirt. Had Bulma commissioned an entire badman wardrobe for him? He would rather swim naked than let such a foul item touch his body, especially his royal jewels.

Vegeta raged while Bulma giggled. Her chest jiggled larger than life as she snickered at him, the exaltation enough that one of her nipples popped out from her bikini. "Oops," she said, concealing herself, and readjusting her top.

Vegeta stared at the prime meridian of her cleavage that aroused no straight edges but limitless curves. It was Bulma who was swimming in his shark-infested waters, yet he had forced himself, the shark, to seek refuge at the bottom of the sea when he should be biting into her and recolouring the water crimson.

With the sun directly overhead, her strong magnetic declination pulled him back to her latitude. Vegeta reached over and tentatively fingered the ends of the halter straps of her bikini. Instead of undoing the knot to bare herself to him, his fingers skirted slowly along the upper edge of the bra portion, methodically tracing all of her from her front down towards her briefs.

Bulma eyed him carefully as he outlined her shape, there was an antsy restraint to his demeanour that wasn't entirely to her liking, and he was looking at her like he couldn't decide whether he would just swallow her in one gulp or would take the time to chew her up into fine morsels first. But there was also an understated intimacy to his light encroachments across her body, and although he was hardly even touching her, her knees began to buckle and soon she would not be able to stand by her own will.

His need for her was so acute just then, with the oppressive blinding rays of the sun shooting down upon him, with that unkind sun that saw all and would bleach the shame of sex into his bones, and he went berserk. Vegeta ripped the bikini from off her chest and volleyed it into the pool. He fondled her greedily, pushing her breasts together to create a more vertiginous décolletage than even the bikini had done. Bulma gasped as Vegeta thumbed her nipples, bubbling the feverish longing for more across the swell of her breasts. He turned her face towards him, chafing her lips with his, his tongue was alive and white-hot, rattling in her mouth with machine gun fire motions. Violently, Vegeta flung her back towards the sunlounger and Bulma landed ass up upon it.

Vegeta pushed her royal blue thong to the side, remarking that her genitals were still puckered red from the battering he had given them only the night before. There was the sound of Vegeta peeling his sticky member from his thigh, whose hardness he then torpedoed into Bulma's waiting mound. Pulling on her pigtails, he hauled her in closer, so that her tropic of cancer aligned with his capricorn. The thick smear of their thighs clapping together drummed in their ears, only becoming louder as Vegeta hammered furiously into her, his face flushed with fever. As they baked in the sun, the bronze of his skin smelted into the melty alabaster of hers. Bulma felt him shiver behind her despite the heat, and cold and hot sweat shingled from his abs onto her back.

Not even a minute had elapsed when Vegeta pulled out, swinging Bulma forwards, with his high calibre dick about to go off. The exploding rip bullets clattered in the chamber of Vegeta's cock for release, and by pumping himself once with his hand, he fired and his terminal ballistics created a splatter portrait of cum across Bulma's face and breasts.

He stood there for a moment, breathing fire, feeling so incredibly unburdened that he could have walked on water if he had wanted, now he would be able to train without any complications. Vegeta raised his pants back up and lobbed her fluffy pink towel at Bulma's bedraggled form.

Bulma looked disbelievingly at him. Of all things, she had least been expecting a midday booty call from Vegeta. As he motioned to leave, Bulma sputtered at him, "Hey, wait a second there buster, I didn't get to come."

Smirking, Vegeta leered over his shoulder at her, "You'll get yours. See you tonight."

Bulma was still stewing in the burn of Vegeta's sun stroke tactics upon her, that had made her cold and denied just when she had gotten nice and warmed up. It was a point of power, not degradation, to have been used as Vegeta's cum receptacle, for Bulma had gotten hers and then some in exchange. Dropping his load onto her face, consequently, had dropped a load of truth bombs onto her as well. She was still his dirty little secret, but Vegeta was becoming increasingly, uncharacteristically sloppy when it came to her and getting off. Anyone could have strolled on by to witness their latest liaison, that had happened in broad daylight no less. Normally prudish, a switch had flipped and Vegeta had just been taken over by beast mode. This time, he wouldn't have stopped in the middle of humping her just because they had gained some unwanted spectators, of that she was certain. Vegeta had needed her. And in satiating that need, even his precious training had been demoted to second tier. Furthermore, Vegeta had caroused with her without the veil of night to act as a buffer between them. That was revolutionary. This wasn't just about sex anymore, Vegeta needed something more from her. What that something more was, she was stumped. Bulma still didn't think Vegeta liked her enough to consider her as anything more than a transient plaything, but maybe she was really getting under his skin, and had been altering him imperceptibly until now when the changes were finally becoming visible. She was open to bending the rules of the game a bit, so it'd be first comes intercourse, then comes a relationship, then comes love, well, nix the last part, even Bulma felt like it'd too dangerous to fall in love with someone like Vegeta.

"Bulma-chan, are you out there?" Panchy's sing-song voice rang out.

Bulma bundled herself up quickly in her towel, mopping the cum away. She shifted nervously in her seat as her mother walked towards her. Please don't let her see my bikini top floating across the surface of the pool, Bulma prayed.

"There you are, honey. Your father is looking for you. He's in the lab."

"I'll be right there, Mama, just give me a minute," to calm the fuck down, she added to herself.

"Oh dear," Panchy exclaimed, "Bulma, you've had too much sun. You're as red as a lobster. I know you wanted a tan but this is going too far. Come on inside."

"Alright, I'm coming." Bulma trotted on after her. But Mama, if only you knew, that's not from the sun, that's from Vegeta, he has that kind of scorching effect.

Vegeta punched the wall of the ship, pitting the aluminium alloy. His training wasn't proceeding as uneventfully as he had assumed it would have after partaking of that therapeutic session with Bulma because he was still restless from his own thoughts. He had introduced a shift in the paradigm with her. First, coupling with her wasn't supposed to happen even once, then it wasn't supposed to happen ever again, then it wasn't supposed to be every day, then it wasn't supposed to happen besides at night, now what stage had he lowered himself to? Please let me have five minutes to train in peace without having her muscling in on my fighting territory? Just one more time and she'll be purged from my system? Never. He was sick. He was sick in the head and he liked it! So this was his journey to his miserable final destination, the end of the line. Why couldn't he have waited until night to take her? He was so weak, no wonder he couldn't ascend. There had been a photophobia to their relations, where everything had been suppressed to a dark room, with nothing becoming digitized, so once done, it would be relegated to ancient history with no record of it ever having come to pass. But now, everything was out in the open, and even if it was for a fleeting instance, his desire for her had been stronger than his desire to train. His training had been distracted by thoughts of her, but when they had sex, he never got distracted by thoughts of training. What did that mean? Vegeta tensed his body, getting into a defensive stance, and feeling the burn running across his body.

All fevers start with coldness. Although fevers raise your body temperature, your internal regulators are also being rebooted, so your brain registers this disturbance as a misunderstood appeal for coldness and your condition will worsen. But fevers can be cured, and the cure is heat. With an increased temperature, your body will sweat, which will flush out the virus until the fever breaks.

Vegeta deduced that his body was not fighting back like it should and that his fever was only being motivated to spread. But once he achieved Super Saiyan, he would never need Bulma for anything again. This was all just a temporary sickness. His ascension would be the only cure, that he was already actively working towards.

However, his voice of reason clucked and disagreed. He could handicap his vision under an umbrella of storm clouds, but the truth would always remain under clear blue skies. Those lies he told himself were so pretty under cover of darkness but so frivolous when exposed to the harsh light of day. Vegeta punched brutally through the air, drowning out that voice. No, he had to keep faith in a cure.

Growing up, Bulma had not gotten many fevers, but when they came, she was not too concerned as she viewed them as necessary to the healing process. So when she felt feverish heat overtaking her, she did not cover herself in cold presses, instead she went in search of more pyrogens. She'd return to the scene of the crime, where it had all begun, accosting Vegeta in the ship to infect her with more of his delicious heat.

Noon was when the sun was at its highest point in the sky, and it also coincided these days with the height of his fever. Vegeta would sneak into Bulma's lab to tussle with her. Soon, nowhere in the compound either touched by light or shadow remained untouched by their passion. And deep down, neither wanted the fever to end.

…

But as the axiom states, all good things must come to an end, and their affair was no exception. The end came in the form of a digital cross flashing across a screen.

Positive, positive again, positive that you're an idiot, Bulma certified. Bulma chucked the positive pregnancy test across the bathroom in a strop. It was the third one she had tried. She huddled herself on the toilet seat, wringing her hands through her hair. Pregnant. Not food poisoning like she had originally thought, but pregnancy. A very different kind of parasite.

"I'm pregnant," she said, trying to acclimatize herself to the idea but the word sounded as foreign to her ears as an extraterrestrial tongue. Her body was now host to a new life. This life was barely bigger than a dot, but it was already a game-changer. A blip in the radar now, just background noise that would amplify to an unignorable signal that would prophesize her own doom. It wasn't as if she had taken no precautions against this mess. After years of foolproof reliability, she never would have suspected that her birth control would fail during her escapades with Vegeta. What was she going to do? There was no one to bail her out of this one. But weighing the pros and cons of any possible solutions would have to wait, as Bulma hurdled off the toilet, lifting its lid to pour her insides into it, overcome with a wicked bout of morning sickness.

Her breakfast wasn't the only thing that would be expelled, she would have to spew out the truth to Vegeta soon enough that their folie à deux had unwittingly turned into an asexual ménage à trois. His anger would be terrible to behold. He was definitely going to take it out on her. If she were lucky, he'd spare her life again or he'd finally follow through with his threats, and she could already imagine her parents reading through her autopsy report - Cause of death: Death by misadventure. Bulma groaned as the sickness passed, standing up jittery. She would have to do a blood test to confirm and to find out how far along she was before she could even think about wrangling with Vegeta.

That night in the glow of their post-coital bliss, the train of Bulma's thoughts were scurrying as fast and making as little headway as a hamster on a wheel. Bulma wanted to tell Vegeta tonight that she was pregnant. Throughout the day, she had spun alternate versions of how she could gently break her bombshell news to Vegeta, but when faced with Vegeta and his roving hands, any confessions had to take a backseat to their runaway lust. Besides, she reasoned to herself, they should have a proper farewell to their short-lived bedroom paradise before everything regressed to all fire and brimstone between them again. Her worry must have been tacked upon her features as visibly as a wanted poster, for Vegeta used his finger to iron out the brooding creases in her forehead. She smiled weakly at him before her body became paralyzed with shock.

Suddenly, Vegeta's hand was resting heavily on her belly, right above where their developing fetus was secretly housed within her, and he was stroking her almost tenderly there. Bulma panicked. Did he already know? Was his ki detection sensitive enough to discriminate the intruding ki of a nine week old fetus? There was a soothing warmness issuing from her abdomen at his caress, which surprised her. It was like the child enjoyed the fatherly contact.

Child. Until then, Bulma had considered herself more as a carrier of only a glob of cells that would somehow exit her in nine months time as a baby. But she couldn't be so impersonal and detached in the midst of such warmth, and that maternal instinct was activated as she regarded herself as carrying a child, not just a fetus, a child that would have pluripotential with hers and Vegeta's genes.

Vegeta's hand stayed upon her for awhile before drifting off her slowly, one finger at a time, as his warmth turned cold.

Bulma reached out for his closed-off hand, "Vegeta, I…,"

"What did I tell you, Bulma?" Vegeta reiterated firmly. "No feelings."

Bulma clammed up, the lump in her throat expanding, as she pulled back, letting him go. Tomorrow, she vowed, I'll just have to tell him tomorrow.

And just like that, with no wailing violins or any other pageantry to mark its closure, their beautiful fever dream was finally at an end.

* * *

References:

\- The concept of the world as a savage garden is taken from Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles

\- Fearful symmetry and burning bright are from The Tyger by William Blake

\- VEGETApsycho's art: art/The-Point-of-No-Return-666508904 and art/Eternity-712581388

\- Ultraviolence and bliss, heavenly bliss are lines from A Clockwork Orange

\- Themes related to Beauty and the Beast

\- Bonding tropes from Vegebul fics from the beginning of time in this fandom


End file.
